


heal your heart (in just five easy steps)

by newsbypostcard



Series: A Tree Grows In Brooklyn [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: 1930s, 1940s, Anxiety, Depression, Dissociation, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Civil War, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Sexual Content, Survivor Guilt, self-care is getting in fights in alleyways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-07-14 14:18:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 88,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7175369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a while, it seems like everything is... well, <em>normal</em>'s not the word, but Steve's as right as anyone would've expected after being that seriously injured. He hurts. Physio takes time. Everything feels hard. It makes sense that it would. He was stabbed twice and shot three times, and Sam says he'd have drowned if he hadn't been pulled out of the river by--</p><p>Sam doesn't actually say who. He doesn't need to. The guards by the door had said enough. If B--<br/>  If he had remembered enough to pull Steve out of the river, then he probably--<br/>    He probably remembers--</p><p>Steve's hand slips suddenly off the counter.</p><p>One of the things Steve learns firsthand: grief is never as straightforward or as linear as five simple steps, even when it doesn't take you 75 years to work through it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> For reference, the five stages of the Kübler-Ross model of grief are, in order: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. This fic intentionally tries to undermine the cleanliness of this conceptual model. (It wasn't even theorized until 1969, so it's not like Steve would accept that so-called "modern" bullshit anyway.)
> 
> This fic is standalone, though events from earlier in the series are mentioned in passing. As with all my fic, all depictions of mental health concerns are not meant to be prescriptive in any way. Please heed the tags for warnings.

  


  


  


  
**B R O O K L Y N**  
_october, 1940_  


  


Bucky had set the telegram down on the table, and then waited -- perfectly still; perfectly silent -- with his hands in his pockets.

Steve had read it, something monstrous growing in his gut. "This can't be right."

"Isn't this what you're always saying, Rogers?" He'd gestured at the page. "Gotta stand up, gotta do something, right? Well, _now's my chance_."

"That’s not right," Steve said again. "It's supposed to be -- _voluntary_ \--"

Bucky was infrequently angry; that was the thing about him. He was always measured where Steve was brazen. Steve could be pacing and talking a mile a minute and throwing fists like a pinwheeling crank, but Bucky was always there to reintroduce control. To run Steve _steady._

The smack of his fist on the table, then, had come as a surprise.

"Did you think we were an exception?" Bucky's voice had been low as he'd stooped to meet Steve's eye. "You think circumstances only affect other people? You with your goddamn agitating, saying FDR hasn't done enough. Now all these men who've survived the Depression get to march off to death by firing squad, including _yours truly_." Bucky had sneered, thrown an arm in the air. "Is _this_ the price of your so-called _freedom_ , this cull of the masses?"

Steve had looked up at him, paling, ill from Bucky's rage. "You work in a factory, Bucky. You could get a deferment, they'll _need_ you to work--"

But Bucky's eyes had widened, his brow creasing with incredulity, and Steve had faltered into silence -- not afraid _of_ him, but _for_ him.

"A deferment?" he'd said. "Until what, Rogers? Until the Axis takes Britain, too? Until they come for _us,_ next? Isn't that what _you_ say is gonna happen, unless we _lay down our lives_ and _stop_ them?"

"I don't know," he'd whispered. He'd swallowed. "But it would give you more--"

He'd stopped. Horror had filled him. Bucky had shaken his head at him, again and again.

"Finish your sentence," he'd said, low. "It would give me more _time._ "

Steve's breath had choked out of him in tatters, his brow knitting, eyes wide. "Bucky," he'd said. "Oh, _Bucky…_ "

And he hadn't been trying for it, he hadn't, but Bucky's face had changed anyway. His eyes had closed, his hands had gone to his hips, and he'd looked to his feet, breath harsh from his nose.

"Quit breaking my heart while I'm trying to be mad, Steve."

"How can this…" He'd frowned, devastated, back down at the telegram. "They can't _make_ you..."

"For a smart guy, you have your real moments, you know that?"

Steve could only look at him; to breathe heavy through his mouth. "I don't… this _isn't_..."

"Calm down," Bucky had said, and he'd thrown himself into a chair and fished a cigarette tin out from within his jacket. "You'll give yourself an attack."

"That won't help," Steve had said thickly, nodding at the cigarette.

"I'll be dead within a year," said Bucky, his lips tensed around the butt of it. He'd struck a match and cupped his hands around his face in that way that lit Steve afire, Bucky must have _known_ it would; he’d wanted to unsettle him. "Allow me one last luxury, would you?"

"Don't."

"Are you gonna stop agitating now?" Smoke had burst from his mouth with every word. "Are you satisfied now? Do you see what happens when you just--"

But Steve had gotten up and taken the cigarette furiously out of Bucky’s hand, before he could even finish the sentence. "Shut up," he'd hissed, and thrown it in the sink.

Bucky had splayed his hands out to either side, incredulous. "Hey!" he'd said--

But then Steve's mouth had been on him, he was straddling over Bucky's lap, and maybe it was the remnants of smoke in his lungs and the way Steve took it all in, but it had been the kind of kiss that had made them both heady and stupid and humming in seconds.

"Front window, Rogers," Bucky had muttered; but his hands were clutching at him, holding him close and angry, and did it really matter if they were found, anyway, if it meant Bucky wouldn't have to go?

Steve had kissed him again, had said, "fuck me on the table," and so Bucky had; and Steve had clutched at him and drawn his nails over his back every time his own shoulderblades grated against the surface, and they both hurt and were angry but they loved each other so what did it matter.

After Bucky had collapsed over him and Steve had buried his hand in his hair and held him close, Bucky had gotten up and lit a match to the conscription notice over the sink. It had smelled like burning cardboard in the kitchen for so long after that but Steve hadn't cared, he'd inhaled it every time, he'd taken the cough if it had meant remembering the way Bucky had muttered furious affections into his neck every time he thrust into him. He’d told him in words everything he'd never bothered to say aloud but that Steve had always known, _we got something, you and me,_ and _you know I'd lay down my life for you anytime, Steve, any day of the week,_ and with Steve wrapped in Bucky's jacket and sitting on the table, Bucky’d set fire to the telegram that would have taken him away and _laughed._

It had been one of those perfect and horrible moments that would stay with Steve forever.

Bucky must have remembered what it said, though, because he'd left for basic two weeks later.

  


  


  


"Rogers." A hand, shaking him awake. "Hey, Rogers."

_Bucky._

He must say it aloud, because --

"Barnes's not here, Captain. He's dead."

Steve's eyes shoot open.

  


  
**D E N I A L**  
_november 1944_  


  


Steve's in a tailspin, lying still. His thoughts grind to a halt, his heart pounding in his chest. His lungs are pressed in the vise of remembrance. He feels sick. He needs to be sick. 

The dream that was a memory floats in the corners of his mind. Steve remembers every detail, the way he'd always known he would and wishes he couldn't.

He gets the bile down, against the odds, but his throat makes a sticking sound when he opens his mouth. "Sorry," he says, when he can breathe, when he can speak. And he is. He is sorry. He might only be sorry for the rest of his life.

As though it matters, he says -- "Was I snoring?"

"Not snoring," Jones tells him, "but thought it best to wake you anyway." Jones is frowning at him. _Concern._ Steve knows the look. He used to get it a lot. "You sure you don't wanna take some time off there, Captain? Might do you good."

"No," Steve says automatically. His mouth remembers the word, as though the mantra has led him through sleep -- as it leads him through work, in the moments he forgets to hold it within him. "No. It's fine. I'm -- fine."

  


  


  


He is not fine.

The root of the problem is that he, Steve Rogers, is too stubborn to die. Born with heart trouble, lung trouble, nerve trouble, trouble in his blood and trouble budding at his fists, he's managed to survive _all_ of it. He's spent so much time being fine that it's become his biggest curse.

He's a miracle; or at least, that's what people used to tell him. He sees the logic in the statement. His mother, healthy, robust and good, died before he could beat her to it. His _father_ , a strong and towering man, died before he could. And now--

And now Bucky--

Steve has to grab the back of a chair when the first sob wracks through him.

Bucky. _His_ Bucky. Welterweight boxing champion, selected for sergeant's training within a year, the same James Barnes who wore his heart on his sleeve and spent his whole life trying to hide it away again.

Gone.

But Steve -- is still here.

A _miracle,_ they'd say.  
Well. It sure is _something._

Steve always turns out fine, so he says he's fine, too. It's a mantra, a guiding principle, something that had come to define him. "I'm fine," he'd say, slurring through concussions, when Bucky pulled him out of dumpsters and half-carried him home.

And after all -- wasn't he? Of course he was. He is always fine. He isn't dead yet.

And hadn't Bucky been plenty fine himself? If Steve's a miracle, then Bucky had matched him at it. "I'm fine," he'd said, gripping to Steve's jacket with a ferocious tensile strength as Steve had half-dragged him out of the Hydra cell. And after all -- wasn't he? He's always fine. He isn't--

He isn't--

Steve chokes on it, when the realization hits him. He falls into the chair; claps his hands over his mouth.

Steve, against the odds, is the one left standing.

He hasn't cried like this since he's been big. His hands feel too hard and too large and it hurts him to press them against his eyes, but does it anyway, he has to, to beat the images down. It's a different hurt, and it's a duller one than the one he can't bear so he presses harder and harder, just to try to stop feeling like this.

It doesn't help. Bucky falls out of the train car. Bucky _fell_ out of the train car, Bucky--

Steve replays it over and over in his mind, wondering what he missed. Wondering what the trick is.

_His hand grasps over air. Grasps over nothing._

Bucky was strapped to that table and they did god knows what to him that he wouldn't talk about, but he still lived through it. Then they survived the warehouse, and they survived a year and a half of Nazi sieges, so _why_ , in a _million years,_ does Bucky think he could die falling off a _railcar_?

_Come on, Rogers. Reach. Out. And catch him._

Steve pours another drink and another drink and another drink. Every time he plays it over with that perfect memory recall, he tries to figure out what he's remembering wrong. But no matter how many times he plays it, Bucky's falling, falling, fell. 

Eventually it becomes what he _could_ have done differently instead of what he _did_ \-- forgets that he's forgetting, only remembers to remember. Because there must have been _something_ he could have done. Extend just that little bit further. Let go of the train; haul him up by both hands. Dive after him into the gully. Grasp harder. Grasp faster. 

In his mind, Bucky dies, no matter what he does, again and again.

Steve pours himself a drink every time, but the memory doesn't erode. Bucky had survived three more years than he'd expected, and maybe that was pretty good, but he had still died, and Steve is still--

Something has to give. He can't do _this_ , he can't live a life without him. Bucky can't have died before him. Something has to change. 

Something _has_ to change.

  


  


  


  
**A N G E R**  
_april 2012_  


  


Everyone's so goddamned eager to tell him what an asset he is. Everyone's eager to ask him what he wants. 

Bucky's been dead two months or sixty seven and a half years, and Steve, _somehow_ , has _still survived._

They've set him up with an apartment. _They._ S.H.I.E.L.D. An org without Peggy. Peggy is 91 years old. People live to 91 more now. Steve will be 94 later this year.

They don't want him to go to see her. _They._ S.H.I.E.L.D. They say Peggy won't remember him. Dementia. Alzheimer's. People who are 91 can have Alzheimer's now.

If Bucky had lived, he'd be 95. People live to 95 more now. He wonders if Bucky would be here. He wonders if Bucky would remember him.

This is not the kind of change Steve had envisioned.

He spends a lot of time at the boxing gym.

He gets paid a retroactive veteran's salary. They gave him the option to re-enlist, but he's never declined anything faster. Bucky told him not to enlist in the first place and he did anyway and now Bucky's dead, Bucky's been dead a long time, Bucky died two months ago, and Steve didn't catch him when he fell.

Bucky fell because of him.

Bucky fell because Steve was always looking for a fight.

_The man who sacrificed everything._

Everyone's so eager to remind him he's an asset.

Every time he hits the bag, Steve's reminded of what his body is now. It's been a couple years with it; he's used to it, for the most part. He wins fights, now. He wins fights against his punching bags. They fly off their braces more often than not. They usually break when they fall.

Every once in a while, Steve finds his hand flying out when the bag doesn't come back to him. _Grasp._ Air.

He traded Bucky's life for this body. He better goddamn live in it.

He's forced into "talk therapy." They -- _S.H.I.E.L.D._ \-- tell him it'll be good for him. Help him process. Help him adjust. Steve feels like he's being interrogated. He hates to sit still; his leg jiggles through every session. He is brazenly restless. He'd rather fight, but he doesn't know what, or where.

He knows he's being a shit about it because he can hear Bucky's voice in his head when he shows up late, or when he runs there just to show up smelly and intolerable.

 _Quit being a fat-head,_ says Bucky-in-his-mind.

"It's okay to be angry," says his therapist / interrogator.

Steve's spent a lot of his life being angry. Being picked on does that to a person. Being targeted. It's been a while since then. So for all the familiarity anger offers him, it also feels wrong to him now. It feels wrong to be this angry when he's this big. It feels strange to watch punching bag after punching bag fall away from him. It's unsatisfying to win these fights. His anger carries so much force, now. So much weight.

"Who's angry?" he replies to his therapist. 

She only smiles at him, pityingly, where's he's hunched on her rattan couch.

The punching bags do offer him some sense of security, eventually. An outlet. A palpable result. Steve gave up everything just to be able to give a better fight, so every falling punching bag represents him as he is. Steve had known he may have been trading in his relationship with Bucky to look like this, to be this. But if he could protect Bucky, wasn't it worth it? If he could show up to the front and _contribute_ something. And he had; he'd gone to that Hydra base and pulled Bucky out. 

Hadn't he?

He--

Grasping at nothing. Straws at best.

Steve doesn't realize he's saying anything when he fights the bags until he hears his words echoing through the gym. Meaningless mantras reveal the dimensions of his despair. _Had to fight. Too stubborn to die on time._

Bucky wouldn't have been on that train at all if Steve hadn't been so _goddamned_ arrogant as to believe he could protect anyone worth a damn.

But he's an asset.  
It's an _honour._  
A symbol of the nation.  
A hero to the world.

Seventy years later, and humanity somehow still hasn't developed higher standards for their heroes than dirt.

  


  


  


  
**A C C E P T A N C E**  
_(or something like it)_  
_january 2013_  


  


It's not that he stops mourning. 

He doesn't. Not in the least. Some days Steve feels like a walking funeral pyre, silently eulogizing an era no one connects with. But the war starts to wear into the background of his day to day life the longer he adjusts to the 21st century, and he sees why others have forgotten it so soon. The politics no longer apply. Nothing is as clearcut as it seemed back then. There are new wars to remember, past and present, and none of them seem…

America's become...

Anyway.

He knows from his years spent in the army, close to Bucky and yet somehow removed from him, that staying busy is an easy way to forget that every breath you take leaves you fragmented by loss. So he joins S.H.I.E.L.D. properly. It's both against his better judgment and the only thing that feels right.

Natasha's the one who suggests it, but Steve's the one who agrees. Whether she's earned it or not, Natasha has Steve's trust. When she says it can really only help him to join, he believes her. He can't help it. She's the only person he's met this century who hasn't put him on some kind of pedestal. She's the only one who bothers to talk to him as though he's Steve Rogers and not just an icon in a suit. He finds he needs that desperately. Talking to her, it almost feels like adjusting to a seventy year time gap is possible.

So he joins S.H.I.E.L.D. when she asks him to. To hell with it. What else has he got to lose.

Natasha likes him right back -- or takes pity on him, or some combination of each -- so Steve's fortunate enough to actually make a 21st century friend. Apart from giving him shit for pretty much everything, she has a healthy respect for his right to a past, and since that's kind of all Steve's about, it becomes a defining aspect of their relationship.

She reminds him of Peggy -- strong; smart; ill-disposed to be told by men where to go or what to do unless they've earned her respect. He'd told her this, early in their friendship. She'd laughed, delighted and self-deprecating, with that ironic rasp to her voice that always made Steve smile.

"I'm flattered," she'd said. "I've never met her, but it's not every day you're told you're reminiscent of a founding member of S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Tony reminds me of his father well enough, too," Steve added, regarding his alleged beer with suspicion, "but with you I mean the comparison with much less concern for the future."

"Well well, whaddya know. Captain America has a sense of humour."

"Please," Steve said, frowning as he set his foul-tasting concoction far away from himself. "Call me Steve."

"Okay, Steve. Something wrong with your beer?"

"I'd like to say there is, but I'm pretty sure they meant it to taste that way."

Natasha had tried it without bothering to ask. "Yeah, tastes like a pilsner."

Steve nodded resignedly. "That's what I thought."

"You don't like pilsner?"

"Probably better to say I'm particular." He'd shrugged. "Can't really complain. The rations we got during the war were much worse."

"They rationed you beer?"

"Tried to. Rich source of Vitamin B."

"Huh. I didn't know that. You want something else?"

"It's fine." He'd smiled at her. From the look on her face, it must not have been a very successful smile. "Just another thing to get used to."

She'd cocked her head at him, but hadn't followed up. That had solidified their friendship quickly and easily.

Before he'd known it Steve had started to look forward to the times when she'd show up unexpected, in his apartment or at the gym, or on a street corner drinking iced coffee from a straw. She'd ask him for help on a mission or, occasionally, take him shopping with a side trip to find a modern but conservative barber. It was always engrossing, and never felt strained with her. For blessed hours -- sometimes, days -- he was so focused on the mission, on being Captain America (or at least on finding a passably modern wardrobe), that he'd actually forget he used to be Steve Rogers.

This, too, was a relief. Eventually Natasha noticed as much and derailed his complaints about struggling to connect to the present with reminders that S.H.I.E.L.D. would keep him much busier than she could. This, in the end, becomes the hardest point for Steve to argue with.

So he joins. He opts into another battle institution after all.

But he draws the line at signing a contract.

S.H.I.E.L.D. handily triples his pension. They want to give him more, but he's never had money before; threatens to throw it out over the street if they try. Steve gets regular missions. He can afford a nicer apartment in DC. He builds a gym for himself; has to interact casually with the world significantly less often, which keeps his anxiety down, which helps keep his self-hatred to a minimum. He stays home more, reads more, spends three months learning how to use the internet and starts filling in seventy years of knowledge gap. He starts to find routine.

And it's engrossing, but not as engrossing as the missions become. The more time he spends as Cap, the less time he has to mourn Steve Rogers. When there's something waiting for him to fight the next day, he doesn't as much feel the blossom of dread and fury in his chest upon waking up. So he puts more and more of himself into S.H.I.E.L.D. He learns new forms of combat. Aikido. Wing Tsung. He loses himself in the detailwork, in refinement of movement; decides to become a hand-to-hand expert. He punches less; learns stealth and fluidity. He finds using his whole body helps diffuse whatever energy it is that builds within him when he's not paying attention. He takes up running out of respect for his pulmonary history; finds he runs a respectable sub-three marathon, with adequate fuelling beforehand.

He jumps out of more planes, figuring -- given his luck -- that he'll probably survive even if he does manage to lodge himself indelibly into the ground.

He breaks fewer punching bags. He starts a savings account with the surplus budget.

And it's hardly as though he's stopped feeling anger or pain; he hasn't turned into a brick wall. Some mornings he still wakes up and feels like he's falling, falling through the ground for how unused to this world he is. He still misses Bucky, desperately. He feels his throat close regularly with guilt and with grief, especially when his hand reaches in just such a way. He misses Peggy in endless thrums; misses her steadfast influence, her belief in him, and the hope for the world he'd felt to look at her. He even misses the Brooklyn he'd left behind, now kept cold by its flashy replacement.

It's just that he lives with it, now. He carries it. It is a keening ache where the burn of desperation used to be -- easier to work with, but constant, unending, with valleys and cliffs, if flat for short spells.

He borders on acknowledging his emotions aloud only when Natasha presses him, but the end result actually becomes that he improves at deflecting, at hiding behind deadpan deliveries. He starts to suspect this is what she intends, from the way her lips curve once his face stops pinching inwards every time he talks about the past. And he's thankful for that, too. It might be among the most useful skills he never learned as a kid. Another benefit of their friendship. It's the kind of thing they don't teach you in therapy.

So he copes. That's the best way of putting it. He stays busy. He hangs out with Natasha; learns the 21st century through her eyes, finds he doesn't actually hate it. He figures out that Captain America has a place in this world, even if Steve Rogers doesn't.

He keeps his head above water, if sometimes only just.

He even stops visiting the Smithsonian, for a little while.

  


  


  


  
**D E N I A L**  
_(the kind that looks like acceptance for a really, really long damn time)_  
_april 2014_  


  


Of course, treading water is never a long-term solution. 

It's not that Steve didn't know what S.H.I.E.L.D. was. He did. Seventy years on and it's a new military arm of an American government obsessed with obedience and order. It still does good things, though, at least for a while, so Steve can ignore the rough edges, particularly when they've done so much to try to give him a life.

Then Fury shows him the flip side, the mechanisms of destruction they've spent months, years putting effort behind. He stands tall, waves his hands around the warehouse as though he's _proud_ of being the arbiter of tomorrow's mass destruction. And Steve knows he's gotta go.

In a way, it's a relief. Now it's undeniable. He can stop lying to himself.

In another, lying to himself was kind of all he had going for him.

After the going, the question becomes _where_. He drifts. Newly purposeless, Steve feels that familiar weight forming in his gut, as though to _drag_ the fight out of him. It clouds his thoughts; makes the world too murky for sense.

He can't trust Natasha. He's got no one to ask for advice. He's desperate for familiarity.

He goes back to the Smithsonian.

They've changed a few things since he was last here, as though they've made a point of learning from him. Neither Bucky nor Peggy have their own rooms. A talking plaque, a five-minute video -- these have been deemed sufficient. The museum clearly hasn't learned enough.

Steve watches the films they show for longer than he should, for someone trying to blend in.

The trouble is that this isn't the Bucky that Steve remembers.

It's short flashes of grainy video and that's no replacement for two years of memory, but if Steve's pulling himself out of yet another misguided fight, this isn't the cocky Brooklyn boy who might've advised him where to point himself next.

By the time this footage was taken, war had worn Bucky down. It's clear as day; he's not sure why he hadn't seen it before. He's not sure why the memories aren't there to back it up.

He plays them over. He watches the video, again and again.

Steve had spent so long trying to forget the things that grieve him because he thought that's how you accepted it. He thought seventy years would eventually become enough to feel able to sit with what happened. But even in the things Steve had allowed himself to ruminate on -- on dragging Bucky out of that Hydra cell; on the last fight Bucky had ever had in that goddamn railcar -- he still hadn't allowed himself to remember that they had _both_ been different by the time Steve had arrived on the front.

But he can see it, now, the way war had changed him. He can see it in the photos, in the video that plays. And after long enough spent staring, he starts to see it in his head, too.

He'd always remembered Bucky's shoulders from the days in Brooklyn -- the way the corners of him had thrown back to accommodate the puff in his chest, crisp and neat in Sunday best. In the video, there's some slope in them, instead -- resignation, or defeat. It's in his eyes, in his body language -- something withdrawn that suggests a side of him Steve had never bothered to get to know.

By 1944, Bucky had become _shy_ with him, and Steve was too self-centered to notice.

The longer Steve ruminates, the more it starts to come together. Bucky had stared at him too much in the days after he pulled him out of the Hydra base. There could have been any number of reasons for it -- that Steve was tall; that Steve was there, after so long spent apart; that Steve was _beside him,_ having dragged him out of a warzone -- so Steve had just accepted it, rather than asked why. Things had become complicated; for all the wrenching his gut had done to see Bucky again, it was also tugging committedly every time Peggy was in the room, and that hadn't been lost on either one of them, the way Steve stood up straighter when she was around.

But Steve still remembers the slow blinks, the shy aversions of his gaze. He just hadn't ever thought it through enough to consider _why_. If Bucky had put on any bluster, any enthusiasm or arrogance in those early days on the front, it had been because he was _trying_ to be the man Steve remembered. 

But there were enough hints now, enough clues to suggest that he never actually _was_. Steve can't remember Bucky ever showing that pompous demeanor again, after the Howlers came together. He'd only followed, after that, even as he possessed the weapons of his training like extensions of himself.

_"You should ask them," Bucky had told him, when they'd caught up over bad ration beer in the days after the warehouse. They'd been leaning over the table, pretending to visualize a map, and once Bucky had helped him point out to locations where the warehouses might've been they'd fallen back into their seats, leaning into eighteen months of reconciliation. "They're idiot enough to fight an unwinnable battle. Just like you." Bucky had smiled around his glass. "Bunch of damn fools, the lot of you. You're practically made for each other."_

_"You can't believe idiocy's what drives me after all this time," Steve had said, trying for shrewd._

_"Are you kidding? I believe it more than ever." He'd shrugged. "Hell, I admire it. The whole world admires it. I never tell you that before? That you're the bravest and stupidest guy I ever met?"_

_"Gee. Thanks, Buck."_

_Eyelashes low on his cheeks at the sound of his name; an aversion of his gaze. Shy, even then. "Aw, hell. What do I know. Maybe they go hand in hand." And he'd downed the rest of his drink, to avoid looking at him._

That shyness. _Humility._

Steve sees it in the video as they laugh -- Bucky turning away from him as soon as the grin hits him, as though hiding a thrill. Bucky had fucked him on their kitchen table and told him what their relationship was, but heaven forfend he show him _this_ , four years on. 

And it is strange to Steve, it is so very strange, because it was in these moments, few and far between, that Steve had known Bucky had loved him -- when he'd looked at him, his smile wide and easy, open, vulnerable, without a trace of arrogance. He used to flash it at the most inconvenient times, but at honest times, and that's how Steve had known it. In a back alley, from time to time, when Bucky was too fond of him to be angry for being bloodied; when they were boiling potatoes for dinner on the days when money was tight and Steve had drawn him as a chef; when Bucky woke him up with cold feet on Steve's legs, curling up against him and pressing grinning kisses to his hairline when he'd given sleep-muffled protests.

When they'd lit the conscription notice on fire, Bucky's eyes alight with adrenaline.

Without these moments, Steve thinks he might've spent a lot more time uncertain about whether Bucky ever _felt_ anything for him. He'd never hidden them before. But for the war -- would he have fought harder, when Steve got close to Peggy? Would he have stopped withdrawing like this, and helped them stay...

But there had still been moments. It wasn't as though he'd withdrawn in full. Hadn't Bucky, when Schmidt had forced Steve into a choice, screamed _Not without you_ , and made the choice for him? Hadn't he been the only one to respond when Steve would tell a dark joke, lighting up with barking laughter and telling him that he thought too much?

Hadn't there been the time when Steve had _taken a razor to thin a patch of hair that was annoying Bucky by his neck? His fingers had brushed soft and long against Bucky's skin, and they'd been forced into intimacy, into a suffocating silence of years-long longing, in a matter of seconds._

_Steve had been captive to it; had worked his hand into Bucky's hair, running stands of it between his fingers as Bucky's breathing went slow. Bucky had let him, Bucky had tilted his head to allow more give; and then Bucky had shuddered, sudden, shoulders slack and vulnerable._

_It was reverence, in a way, how slow and methodical he became. Nostalgia woke something deep within him, within them both. Bucky -- had more than let him, Bucky had turned his head even further to the side so Steve would wrack his hand up by his temple, and so Steve did, clenching his fingers at his roots, moving his thumb past the shell of his ear._

_And then Steve had stayed, had bunched his fingers in and_ held _, and Bucky had not moved. It had taken every ounce of restraint Steve had not to stoop and press his lips to his hairline. He had wanted to hear the way Bucky's breath would leave him when he did, he had wanted to hear--_

_He'd looked down at the curve of Bucky's neck and worked his hand back in his hair, instead, until his palm was flush against him. His thumb stroked at Bucky's skin, again and again, and Bucky's hand had moved back, unexpected, to grab at Steve's fingers, to move them around his shoulder. His breath had been warm against Steve's knuckles, he'd pressed his lips to them soft--_

_But a rustle of wind at the edge of the tent, and they'd snapped apart, each of them as fast as the other._

In the video, when they are laughing, Bucky's eyes default to a point several inches too low.

They drag up the line of Steve's chest, follow along his neck and the cut of his jaw. Bucky pulls away the second he meets his eye, the quality of his grin changes; becomes more withdrawn, if as helpless as before, as though to look at Steve tall and confident gave him a rush of pain and pride, in alongside that old humility.

After a year and a half on the front together, in the moments he'd let his guard down like this, Bucky had still expected Steve to be small.

Steve watches it, over and over. He watches it, to make sure he never forgets it again. He realizes just how much he had never asked him, how much they'd never talked about.

He had been so caught up in being Captain America that he'd forgotten to ask Bucky what it was that made his shoulders slope that way. 

He had never asked what made him bow his head instead of to look at him. He had never thought to ask what it was he was really concealing. Convinced it was the memories of their forbidden relationship, of the way they used to use their mouths and their hands to bring vulnerability forth, Steve had never thought to push against that melancholy smile or the way he'd stood next to Steve with that complex edge of discomfort.

By the time Bucky died, Steve had barely known him.

These are the only answers Bucky holds for him: a library of new regrets. He can't take it anymore. 

Steve peels himself away, ducks into the video room, and watches Peggy smile at him sadly until the museum closes.

  


  


  


**B A R G A I N I N G**  
_april 2014_

  


S.H.I.E.L.D. was wrong. She does remember him -- for a while, at least. 

Peggy takes his face between her hands, these coarse hands, worn by time, and Steve takes such a long time before he finds words for her.

"I'm real turned around, Peggy," he says eventually, his voice dragging yet quiet, and she smiles at him in just the way he'd thought she would.

"I should expect so," she tells him; and for the first time in two years, Steve thinks he might feel safe.

  


  


  


As with all things in this century, it is shortlived. Peggy's memory fails her. But she still recognizes him. He thinks she must know more of him than he does. 

He's home for five minutes before he finds himself at the VA centre. Finds Sam asking him-- 

"You thinking about getting out?"

Peggy had told him S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't what it was, Peggy had told him to start over, and he had thought -- _at what_? 

He could buy a motorbike, he thinks, and ride across the country; but did that change what S.H.I.E.L.D. was? Did that change what might be coming?

"You thinking about getting out?" Sam asks him.

Steve equivocates; avoids the point. He might not trust Natasha right now, but he definitely owes her a beer for teaching him that.

"You could do whatever you want to do," Sam tells him; and the way he allows Steve the deflection makes him think maybe there's something to be found, here; something that might ground him. 

"What makes you happy?" he asks. 

When Steve smiles against the feeling in his gut it's a terrible thing, he knows it is, and Sam's expression adjusts the moment he does.

_"Quit breaking my heart, Rogers," Bucky used to say when he'd smile those non-smiles; and then he'd throw an arm around his shoulders and talk shit until Steve wasn't sad anymore._

"I don't know," Steve says to Sam. And this time, he means it. 

After all, it's the truest thing about him. There's not a thing that he knows that still knows him.

  


  


  


Soon things grow chaotic, and Steve stops thinking for a while. To say it's a relief isn't accurate, but it _is_ noise of a different sort. If not for Fury's death and an unknown assassin on the loose -- if not for the way his friendship with Natasha, his one anchor to the present, is being undermined at every turn -- Steve might've welcomed it.

Survival is a familiar priority, at least. He was looking for familiarity.

Nat's still the best lead he's got, and she does have instincts he doesn't. Stealth. Cover. So he keeps on following her, even as he feels suspicious. Natasha does get him out, to her credit -- if by first making them engaged, and then by making out with him on the escalator. The fact that this isn't even the weirdest thing that's happened to him this week confirms with him beyond doubt just the kind of week it's been.

On the way to Camp Lehigh, Steve realizes this; realizes that the shit has hit the fan with particular vigor over the past few days, and decides to cut himself a break. He lets himself trust Natasha again, even if it defies reason, giving over to his fondness for her when she puts her feet on the dash the second she gets into the truck.

Based on the way she keeps needling him with her intimate questions, Steve decides he's not the only one making an educated guess with trust today.

"For all the flak you give me about my personal life, I've never heard a single thing about yours," Steve tells her, when their conversation lulls. "Anyone special in _your_ life? Anything actually informing your endless attempts to set me up?"

Natasha lets a breath out through her nose. "I seem like the dating type to you?"

"That's not an answer. And," he adds, plying mockery into his tone, "I feel like if you don't answer it, you're kind of answering it, you know?"

"Look at you. Mister interrogation all of a sudden."

"Aha. So it was _your_ first kiss since 1945." He gives her a deadpan look. "Shoulda guessed."

He doubles back, glances over; sees that she's smiling as she stares out the window.

"No," she answers eventually -- quiet; sincere. "No one special."

Steve frowns, taken aback by her sincerity. "Really? I kid, but I… guess I'm surprised."

"This may come as a shock to you, but not a lot of guys go for the whole 'disappears off the grid for months at a time and/or forever' thing. Think it threatens their masculinity or something."

"Sure, but in between the disappearances, you're still... you know. Beautiful, talented, sharp..."

"Wow." Natasha turns her head to face him. "One kiss and you start to get ideas."

"I thought we were engaged," he says -- then adds, more serious, "No ideas. Just saying that it seems like even something short term should come to you fairly easily. I kind of expected you to be beating off suitors at the door."

"Who says I'm not?" Her mouth curves peculiarly. "Doesn't mean they want to date me after I've knocked them unconscious."

Steve smiles gently. "You know what I mean."

"Look, you said it yourself. It's kinda hard to trust someone when you don't know who that someone really is. I stopped being the relationship 'type' a long time ago. You, though," she says, turning back to him. "There's still hope for you."

"So all these dates you're trying to set me up on... you're just _projecting._ "

"No, no, I wouldn't say that."

"That explains a _lot._ "

"I'm not projecting! I want you to be happy, Rogers. So sue me."

Steve's smile is small and delicate. "Yeah, well. Maybe I stopped being the happiness 'type' a long time ago, myself."

"Wow. _Bleak._ " Natasha looks forward again. "We _really_ need to get you laid."

Steve shakes his head. "I do better than you think I do. I'm more worried about _you_ , now."

"Oh, please."

"I don't even know what you do for fun."

"What's that?" she asks, deadpan.

"You can't be working _all_ the time."

"Why not? Aren't you?"

"No, actually. I'm spending a lot of time doing things like learning to drive an automatic transmission and looking up what the hell a hair iron's for."

"Flat iron."

"Whatever. Did you know that some cars drive themselves now? I'm not ready for that."

"That counts as work, looking up all that stuff."

"No, it doesn't," says Steve. "Consider them hobbies. I read a _ton_."

"I read."

"Now you're just deflecting."

"Nice day, isn't it?"

A click of his tongue. "There must be someone you're interested in."

"I know you're kind of upset with me right now, but don't you think this line of interrogation is a bit cruel and unusual?"

"Is it when you do it?"

"Yes," she says immediately. "But I own that. _You're_ an actually good person, so cut a girl a break."

"I've seen the way you are with Clint Barton," Steve barrels on. "Are you really telling me there's _nothing_ there?"

Half a beat's pause, almost imperceptible. "Me and Barton?" she says, too easily. "Please."

Steve nods tightly. "Ah. I'm sorry. I didn't realize."

"Nothing to realize."

"Sure." He purses his lips. "Well, you ever wanna talk about it, let me know."

"Nice try, Rogers. Tell you what -- you wanna be friends? Tit for tat. Information's not free. You're saying you do better than I think you do? You tell me yours and I'll tell you mine."

"Why do I get the impression I'd tell you mine only for you to use the information and never tell me yours?"

Natasha gasps. "Slander!"

Steve smiles and looks ahead. "Fine. I'll let it drop. But maybe now you'll stay out of my dating life a little more. Tit for tat."

"Not a chance," she says fondly. "You should say 'tit' to every woman you meet, by the way, just like that. That'll really get them going."

"Jesus. Not even a little reprieve?"

"Nope."

Steve takes a breath. "So if you don't accept that I'm too busy and you _obviously_ don't accept that it's rude to project your issues onto other people--"

"Hey!"

"--can you at least consider that I'm just not ready to date much? I read somewhere once that you're supposed to wait two years after a loss before trying to move on. I'm doing the best I can, here, but my best doesn't necessarily make me either approachable or relatable." He shakes his head and looks down the road. "I think I'm realizing for the first time this week how little I know about myself. So, yeah. Maybe it's a little soon. Is that good enough? Will you give it up now?"

The silence that follows worries him. Steve looks over to see Natasha staring at him pointedly.

"What," he says, despite being utterly convinced he doesn't want to hear it.

"When you talk about _loss_ ," she says, her voice velvety with false ignorance.

"Oh, boy. Here it comes."

"Are you talking about _Barnes_ , perchance?"

A twist in Steve's gut. He sighs hard against it. "I time-jumped 67 years, Natasha. Take your goddamn pick of losses."

"That wasn't a denial. Who else did you lose who might rank in a conversation about dating?"

He frowns at her. "I was seeing someone during the war. _Publicly._ "

But far from sating her, this only causes her to round on him with wide eyes. "Oh ho! Where do I start!"

He whispers a string of profanity under his breath. Natasha elects to ignore this. 

"When you say ' _publicly_ '..."

"Romanov."

"Publicly compared to _what_?"

"Let it _go._ "

An ominous pause. "Hmm."

He frowns at her. "Stop."

"Steve," she says quietly. "You know it's not illegal anymore."

All the blood feels to drain out of him at once; he grips his knuckles white around the wheel. "Take me seriously when I tell you that I'm not talking about this," he says, voice low.

But Natasha either doesn't pick up on his tone or doesn't care. "I saw the footage in the Smithsonian, same as everyone else." She sounds to be smiling; Steve's too busy trying to see the road through the spots in his vision to check to make sure. "The way he looked at you in that video..."

When Steve pulls off the road -- with a maneuvre that might've been reckless for someone with worse reflexes -- Natasha finally falls silent.

Steve leans his elbow high on his own seat; feels his fingers gripping into the leather as he looks at her, fighting with everything he has to keep his face as steady and as neutral as possible. "You don't talk about him," he says. His voice is low, a tremor underlies it that he can't subdue, and Natasha is blinking at him, sober, unthreatened. "Not ever. Understand?"

Natasha's eyes search his, flitting back and forth. "Okay."

Steve nods, finally satisfied his point's put across, and turns to get the truck back on the road as quickly as possible. The tension of silence stretches on for a long while, after that.

"I'm sorry," says Natasha, and when she does it sounds sincere. "I didn't know."

Steve shakes his head as his lungs take in a breath against his will. "No one does," he says, and watches the road. "Let's keep it that way."

  


  


  


One time, during the war, Bucky had gotten shot. It was an easy mistake; any one of them might have made it. He'd tell Steve later that he'd thought he'd cleared the field, that he'd picked up his rifle and headed toward the rendezvous, but an enemy that should have been neutralized had raised an arm and gotten in a lucky shot.

Steve had heard him cry out; had turned immediately to claim him. Steve had dragged him behind cover by his shoulders, ignoring Bucky's strangled cries that he was _fine_. By then the rest of the Commandos were surely out of range; it was up to Steve to keep him alive, but he was no medic, and Bucky was--

"Just a graze," Bucky had ground out, and in a sense he was right. The entry and exit wounds were the same open gash, but it meant that a chunk was missing at his hip and it was bleeding too much. Steve was good under pressure but he wasn't trained for this, and he'd pressed down hard on it knowing it wouldn't be enough on its own.

"I got you," Steve had said anyway, voice shaking through the lie as he tried to think what next; and he'd started when Morita had appeared by his side.

"Hey, man," Morita had smiled at Bucky, lifting Steve's hand to take a careful look. The sidelong glance at Steve had confirmed his suspicions. Morita had grabbed at Bucky's M1 a second later and snapped his fingers, trying to keep Bucky's eyes in close focus. "We gotta do something about this wound, all right?" Steve had stared at him in abject alarm before he'd only slipped out a cartridge and put the rifle aside. "You're gonna be fine, though, you're gonna be fine. It's gonna hurt like a bitch, but you'll pull through this, Barnes, you got this."

Morita had turned to Steve and said in an undertone, "You better use that damn strength of yours to hold him down," and Bucky'd looked up to see him clenching a pair of pliers between his teeth and thrown his head back in expectant agony.

"You're gonna blow us all up trying to take that apart," he'd bitten miserably, "just leave me and finish the mission"; but Steve had clenched his teeth and braced him against the ground, and Morita had _not_ blown them up prior to spreading gunpowder on the wound.

"Bite down on this," Morita'd said; and the sound of Bucky's screams in his ears against the stick in his teeth when the match hit his skin had been enough on its own to make Steve's throat close up.

Bucky's hands were clutching at his wrist, beating at his chest, because it was easier to fight Steve than it was to fight the pain and he knew Steve could take it. Steve just held him down and whispered stupid bullshit in his ear and he wasn't crying, he was _not_ crying, Bucky was a _fighter_ , Bucky could survive anythi--

  


  


**D E N I A L**  
_april 2014_

  


It is strange, he thinks emptily, the way shock works. 

Memory has always been a thing that has lived within him. It has a life of its own; it moves; it drives under his skin and makes itself known. 

So when the mask comes off and Bucky stares back, Steve thinks -- _It can't be him, it_ couldn't _be him,_ yet he stands down as he thinks it, because he knows that it is.

In the space of two seconds, this is what Steve remembers.

Steve remembers the night before, when the assassin who killed Fury had caught his shield, he had looked at his eyes and thought of Bucky. He had looked at his eyes and thought of 1944, when Bucky would unload his rifle after a mission and report six kills without looking at a soul. Steve would always want him to make eye contact in moments like these, but he never ever would, and Steve hadn't pushed it because he'd been a thick fool.

He remembers the times when they'd been grouped around a fire, and Steve would notice Bucky's sunken gaze through the dirt on his face. He remembers the way he'd hunched over himself, his disengagement from conversation, and how Steve would ignore it and pretend Bucky was tired.

He remembers seconds earlier, when the assassin's eyes had found him even while his rifle held ready, and how Steve had flashed back to seeing Bucky lying in wait with his own.

All with perfect recall. 

His memory lives in him.

This is how he's certain it's Bucky, when Bucky looks back.

He's a hair's breadth from getting shot when Sam appears and saves his life. Bucky's gaze snaps to the side, and Steve would swear that Bucky'd remembered something, given the alarm on his face. 

He's a hair's breadth from getting shot when Natasha saves him, too. And then, like the ghost he is, Bucky is gone.

\-- _Bucky_ is gone.

Bucky _was here_.

Steve is certain of it. But he doesn't believe it.

He plays the events in his head, over and over. Bucky's face in the middle of the street. Bucky's _voice,_ saying, "Who the hell is--" 

Numbness shoots through him. To drop his shield feels easy, after that; even the gun against his head, Rumlow's voice in his ear, feels like nothing at all. He can't feel a thing, not a goddamn thing. He only knows that he's falling.

For the first time in his life, Steve Rogers stops fighting.

  


  



	2. Chapter 2

  


  
**D E P R E S S I O N**  
_may 2014_   


  


It's not like he's never been depressed before. Looking back, he's probably been fighting this for a long, long time. He’s always fighting. Steve Rogers _fights_. Steve is a _fighter_ , he _fights_ , he-- 

It turns out there _is_ a limit to what Captain America can handle. It's just that no one, least of all Steve, would have guessed that limit was psychological.

For a while, it seems like everything is... well, _normal's_ not the right word, but he's as right as he would've expected after having been that seriously injured. He hurts. Physio takes time. Everything feels hard. It makes sense that it would. He was stabbed twice and shot three times, and Sam says he'd have drowned if he hadn't been pulled out of the river by--

Sam doesn't actually say who. He doesn't need to. The guards by the door had said enough. If B--

If he had remembered enough to pull Steve out of the river, then he probably--

He probably remembers--

Steve's hand slips suddenly off the counter. 

He stumbles to catch himself; it hurts. _Fuck,_ it hurts, it burns; he seethes. He presses at his side; breathes through it.

It takes a long time to fade. He stands still until it does. 

By the time he remembers the food sitting in front of him, it has gotten cold. The sun, it seems, has also set.

He picks up a fork and eats it anyway.

It's hard to explain, the peculiar blankness where Bucky is concerned. Steve did his best to put it out of his mind at first. The trouble is that everything that would usually preoccupy him -- the fact that he's injured; the fact that S.H.I.E.L.D. turned out to be Hydra; the fact that he's out of a job -- all links back to Bucky. 

Fortunately for him, he's Steve Rogers. He fights anyway. He's nothing if not skilled at ignoring the nebulous catastrophe budding in the corner, at focusing his energies at something else entirely. At the fight. At the--

_Is he supposed to fight -- Bucky?_

He is going to have to, isn't he? He's going to have to fight him again. Momentum and ideals had been the only things allowing him to do it the first time, and if he doesn't have either of those anymore, he's not sure he can--

_Bucky is Hydra._

When he tries to find somewhere else to put his mind, Steve finds that he can't.

In the minutes that follow, every time he tries desperately to divert from the blank space of Bucky, it only grows in him, flourishes, and Steve feels consumed. Tension blossoms in his muscles; something screams in pain at his back, in his gut. He puts a hand to his side again, only it suddenly stops being that he _got shot_ and becomes that _Bucky shot him_. It's not that Hydra is alive and that it's S.H.I.E.L.D., but that it's _Bucky._

Bucky _is Hydra._ Bucky -- shot him. _Bucky --_

\-- Bucky _is here_ \--

\-- with Hydra. Shot him. Bucky shot him three times. Bucky stabbed him two times.

Bucky dragged him out of the Potomac.

 _The fear and the fury in Bucky's eyes. His fist wound back, his breath in flurried bursts. He hadn't_ wanted _this, he hadn't_ wanted _to do this, he hadn't--_

A falling sensation begins at Steve's heart, and he clenches his fist against it, waiting for it to stop.

It does not stop.

Steve doesn't stop falling for a very long time.

If realization is the cousin of relief, it is something more toxic, more like a fire, proliferating like disease. It transforms him, becomes him; leaves him draining endlessly into a chasm at his feet. Steve stands motionless in his kitchen and allows himself surrender to it, allowing the blankness free reign. Reality sets into every cell, covers every inch of him, embodies him as though it were the only true thing.

Eventually he finds himself sitting in a chair, staring endlessly out into the night. To do anything else seems like too much.

Steve stays there for three days. For those three days he does not sleep.

Well -- he _sleeps_. He sleeps in short bursts, usually unintentional, upright in his chair by the front room window. This is Steve's favourite chair. He sits in it all the time. The phonograph is on the other side of the room, but that makes the acoustics ideal. The sound waves bounce off the walls and the windows and back toward him in surround sound, the proper kind, nondigital, and he can stack his books on the ledge by the window into stacks. He has stacks for 'currently reading' and 'to read' and 'already read but may still want to look at.' He likes to organize them all in front of him. He can put drinks on the ledge and he can stretch his feet out on it too. The windowsill is so broad that if he was still small he would be able to sit on it and look out over the water. That's why he put this chair there. So he could pretend he was.

Not that he'd have had this apartment if he was small. Not that he is small anymore. He'd traded that, for this. Bucky used to be able to touch his thumb to any one of his fingers when he’d wrapped his hand around Steve's wrist. He used to prove it to him when Steve was on one of his rants, every time, as though making some kind of point. He used to hold onto him and listen and smile, his eyes would be warm and fond, and he would tap along to the rhythm of Steve's words, one fingertip after another against his thumb, pinky to pointer to pinky again. 

Gentle pressures over Steve's pulse. 

Steve grabs at his own wrist. It's not the same.

Steve has found solace in water since he was a boy. He made a point of finding an apartment that could see the water, if only some tiny sliver off in the distance. He made a point of positioning his chair in just such a way that he could look out at the buildings and the sky and the water when he needs a moment to think. Bucky used to find him sitting by the water when he was out of sorts. He would dangle his feet over the side of whatever he had found to sit on, a crate or the wall or a rooftop, and Bucky would always find him, somehow. Steve didn't like to think how long he used to look, but it never mattered. Bucky would always find him and sit down beside him and wrap his hand around his wrist, if just for a second, and join him in the quiet. 

They might have been in public but they loved each other there, in front of the water, just the same as anywhere else.

_Bucky at fourteen, standing in the East River with his pants rolled up to his knees._

_He'd gotten taller that year, so much taller, and Steve's hair was so long that he could look at where Bucky was standing, water up to his ankles, through the blonde haze of his bangs._

_Bucky’s hands were pressed hard into his lower back. His shoulders were thrown back with a new confidence – something that took hold of Steve, somehow, as a silhouette worth transcribing. He’d taken out his pencils and grinningly yelled at Bucky every time he'd tried to move, until Bucky'd gotten the picture and agreed to stand still. He'd always been so good about that. He always stood still when Steve wanted to draw him, even when it took hours to get right._

_"Boy," Bucky said, waiting for Steve as he drew him. "Sky sure is red."_

_"Mm." A tweak in his voice; he'd cleared his throat against it. "Sort of."_

_"What do you mean, sort of?"_

_"I mean sort of. More of a tuscan."_

_"Tuscan!" A burst of laughter. "Where the hell'd you get that from?"_

_"They use it on trains sometimes."_

_"You read that in one of your books?"_

_"Artist's eye, Bucky."_

_"Boy oh boy."_

_Steve smiling; chewing on his lip as he reached for something darker to get the right shade of the sun on the horizon. "They don't have a pencil in tuscan red, though."_

_"You oughta write the pencil people about that outrage. What's the damn difference, anyway?"_

_"Oh, you know. You don't get reds like the pencils in nature much. Poppies, I guess."_

_"Aw, pal. Stay out of the grim stuff, just for tonight, whaddya say?"_

_"Well, then, look at it." Steve looked up to see Bucky twisted right around, staring at him something stark. "That look like a flower petal to you? It's worse than a rose, even. It's blood gone rusted, dried 'round its edge."_

"Jesus, _Steve!"_

_"Storm's coming, I guess," Steve said, and shrugged as he returned to his drawing._

_A long, long silence; then, voice obscured by the fact that he'd turned forward again, Bucky said, "You've got that backward."_

_"Huh?"_

_"Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning." A hand extended out in front of him. "Red sky at night, sailors delight."_

_The laugh had exploded out of him before Steve had known he was making it. "Now where'd_ you _hear_ that?"

_"Common wisdom, Rogers."_

_"Common_ sailor's _wisdom?"_

_"That's right."_

_"What do you know about it?"_

_"Well. You know." A shrug; the roll of his head on his shoulders, like there was some tension there he'd had to get out. "Pa's been out of work so long. Been talking to this one guy down at the docks about taking on an apprenticeship. No pay at first, but you never know what it could turn into."_

_Steve heart had pounded so fast, so suddenly, he'd had to put the drawing away to stop his hand from shaking scribbles all over the page. "You wouldn't quit school, Bucky," he'd said, as though certain._

_"No? Why not?"_

_"You're smart. You could go to college if you wanted."_

_"On what money?"_

_"Scholarships, I'd bet."_

_"What damn_ scholarships _? Dunno if you've noticed, Steve, but the whole world's pretty much gone to shit these days, and there aren't exactly any signs of it getting any better."_

_"I mean it, Buck. You've got a straight shot, the way you figure things out. You shouldn't give it up."_

_"And Ma? My sisters?" A glance at Steve -- something blown wide open in his eyes, red hues forcing the line of his jaw to glow fiery and strong. "Don't they deserve to eat something now and again? I can't provide for 'em on a_ scholarship _, now, can I?"_

_"Well, can you provide for 'em on an unpaid apprenticeship out at sea either?"_

_Bucky's eyes flitting down; seeing Steve's fists bunched tightly by his knees. Then a smile appeared suddenly on his face, that fake one, the one that always made Steve feel sick to see._

_"Come on, Rogers," Bucky'd said, and the whole tone of his voice had changed as he'd turned and waded out of the water toward him. "Let's get out of here before this blood-rusted sky eats us alive, huh?"_

It's not that life was simpler then. It's not that either one of them had been _happy_. 

But he had been -- 

\-- and Bucky was --

Steve breathes, deep and shaky, in through his nose. His fist forms hard against the arm of the chair; he presses his lips together until it grows painful.

He sits in his chair, and remembers, and falls.

Eventually the falling is something he adjusts to, and he regains function over his limbs. He forces himself to eat in small doses, every time he gets up to use the bathroom. A tomato, fresh and succulent, somehow tasteless. A piece of bread, utterly plain. The only thing he can bring himself to do apart from that is to look out the window; to stare at the water. He thinks about Bucky and tries to breathe on.

Steve blinks up three rusted sunrises later to find Sam looming over him.

"Man, what the hell?" Sam says. Steve blinks at him. "You won't answer your phone. You were a no-show for physio yesterday. I was seriously fucking worried. I just broke your door in, by the way, did you even notice?"

Steve stares at him, trying to work his throat around the lump within it, for long enough for Sam's anger to fall off him by visible degrees.

"How long you been sitting here?" Sam asks eventually, taking Steve's jaw roughly as though to examine his stitches under the stubble.

"Not long," Steve says, his voice coarse with disuse.

"Liar," Sam says. "You look like shit. What's the last time you changed out your bandage?"

"Dunno."

"Hours? Days?"

"Something like that."

A sigh -- frustration -- then Sam's hand pulling at his elbow. "Come on."

"I'll do it," says Steve, shrugging Sam's hand off him and trudging toward the bathroom.

"Damn right you will. You need a kick in the ass though."

"I'm fine."

"You're a disaster. You've earned your right to it, don't get me wrong, but don't give yourself an infection over it."

Steve slams the bathroom door behind him to shut Sam out; presses his fists against the counter, and _seethes_. 

After staring at his own unshaven, battered reflection for long enough, he gets annoyed enough with his own inaction that he manages to force himself through the necessary steps to redress his wounds. He finds bandages, tape, gauze, disinfectant; he hisses as he takes off his shirt, pulls the tape off his skin. He steels himself against the pain of the disinfectant and does a sloppy job of reapplying the dressings -- but then it's done. A minor accomplishment.

He puts all the equipment back where he found it and sets his head against the wall, closing his eyes, imagining a world where he'd been left alone.

More time must pass like this than he thinks, because when he finds it in him to step back into the common area, Sam's already managed to fry up some kind of egg dish.

"Eat that," Sam says, spatula in hand, pointing to the steaming plate on the table.

Steve blinks at it; then, with the bitter realization that he _doesn't_ know the last time he ate, he sits. He picks up his fork. He shovels one bite of food after another into his mouth. He doesn't really taste it, but he figures that's not the point. His stomach hurts. He presses on.

Sam doesn't say anything to him. He might still be angry, but Steve's not sure what to do to fix it. He watches as Sam tosses leftover slices of vegetable into his mouth and slides dishes into soapy water. He cleans up the meal; writes a few things down on Steve's pad of paper. He takes Steve's plate when he's done with it and slides it into the sink with the rest. 

"Go to bed," Sam says then, steepling his eyebrows.

Steve doesn't really want to do that, so he waits for a better idea to find him. He eventually figures out that he does miss looking at that faraway sliver of water. He finds momentum enough to pull himself away from the table and toward the front window.

"No," Sam says flatly, predicting his trajectory. "You seen the circles around your eyes? You're not fooling anyone. I don't care when the last time you slept was, but you're going the hell to bed now."

"I can't see the water from the bedroom."

"You don't need to see the water to sleep."

"I can't see the water if my eyes are closed, either."

"Exactly."

"You're not understanding me."

"You're gonna have to sleep eventually."

Steve has nothing to say to that. He exhales angrily. 

"So you're just gonna sit in your chair and mope for the rest of your short, sleepless life?"

"Eventually I'm gonna have to go find Bucky," says Steve.

"You really gonna do that without sleeping?"

Steve blinks. He hadn't expected a ready agreement. "I'll sleep when I have a plan."

"That's what you've been doing sitting there for the last however many days? Planning?" Sam gives a nod. "Okay. You got anything so far?"

Anger bubbles in Steve's chest. He clenches his fists; stares Sam down.

"You're not on an even keel right now, Cap." Sam's voice isn't softer, exactly, but it isn't as sharp. "Sleep on it and start over. Even if you don't feel better, you'll still be more capable. That's a guarantee."

When Steve still doesn't move, Sam walks up to him and puts a hand on his shoulder, as though to guide him bed if he won't go himself. Steve resists, by instinct; rolls his arm over in its joint, ignores the shock of pain that rides through him as he moves to shove Sam off. But Sam is too fast, or stronger, or maybe just uninjured; he slaps Steve's hand effortlessly out of the air when Steve turns to fight him.

"I know you're angry, but it's not me you're angry at," Sam tells him calmly; and he pushes at his back until Steve is too busy grinding his teeth against rising bile to do anything about it. 

Once in the bedroom Sam stands him in front of his bed, turns him around by the shoulders, and then pushes him backward with a finger in the centre of his chest. 

Steve's too injured or tired or careless to do anything except drop down, the blankets puffing up around him. 

Sam leaves him there, then, not bothering even to close the door behind him when he goes.

Steve can't see the water here, but it turns out the ceiling's just the same.

  


  


  


Once, when Steve was sixteen, he had woken in the middle of the night to find Bucky staring at him from the fire escape. It had been August, sweltering; Bucky had been sitting there, with his feet propped against the outer sill of Steve's window, clad in suspenders pulled over a filthy white undershirt, a pack of cigarettes tucked up by one shoulder.

Steve had sat bolt upright, heart fluttering and then pounding, apprehension flooding him for reasons unknown. To see Bucky staring at him like that had made him break into a dead sweat, but despite the heat he hadn’t had the slightest idea why.

"Did something happen?" Steve asked; then, with his own hand pressed over his chest as though to subdue the beat of his heart, "God, Bucky, what happened?"

Bucky suddenly sat himself up straighter at the sound of Steve’s voice, his fists pushing at the metal beneath him. It was as though he was startled to see Steve there -- as though Steve had snuck into _his_ windowframe, instead of the other way around.

Steve had glanced at the clock. It was nearly three in the morning.

"Buck," Steve said, voice grainy and thin. He’d had to speak; Bucky's silence, his halting gestures, had led Steve to believe it had been the worst day of his life, somehow. “Say something.”

"Hey, Steve," Bucky said, finally. His nonchalance was too forced; it rattled, dragged with wrongness. He reached to pull the pack of Bright Stars out of his suspender strap, but even in the partial light from the street Steve could see something was wrong just in this motion, this regular gesture. "Didn't mean to wake you."

"You didn't." A blatant lie, in respects, but Bucky really hadn't been moving when he'd woken up, so Steve was at a loss for what it could’ve been. "Is everything all right?"

"'Course it is." The flicker of the lighter had shone Bucky's face in full array, and Steve's eye had been drawn immediately to the jut of his chin, to the curve of his lash on his cheek. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"What brings you here, Buck?" Steve’s heart had pounded unflaggingly. "It's late."

The embers had burned a bright, furious orange, and then Bucky's fingers had withdrawn the cigarette from his mouth as he'd given Steve a fleeting smile. "Couldn't sleep is all. Never you mind, Steve, forget this ever happened. I'll get out of your hair."

And then Bucky had pulled himself up with two hands braced on the fire escape's railing; and before Steve had even gotten his protest out, he'd been gone, scarpered away without so much as a backward glance at him, cigarette dropped and burning behind him.

The next day, Bucky had acted so normally as to be suspicious. The pull of tension had strung between them when Bucky’d opened the door to see Steve standing there, but then he’d hooked an elbow around his neck same as ever and dragged Steve inside, talking a mile a minute before Steve could even get a question in edgewise. 

“Bucky,” he’d managed eventually, when the room had grown cloying with cottoned silence. "Do you... do that a lot? Hang out by my window at night? It’s okay if you do, I just…"

And Steve had trailed off, but Bucky hadn't said anything to that; only changed the subject casually a couple of horrifying beats later, and Steve had been too ashamed to admit why he'd wanted to know. 

It was because he'd always found Bucky so beautiful when he slept, and he didn't understand it. But if Bucky thought the same thing, maybe at least Steve would know he wasn't alone.

  


  


  


Sam's still in his house when Steve drags himself out of the bedroom hours later.

Steve stops in his tracks and exhales loudly upon seeing him sitting in his favourite chair. Sam merely stares, not even bothering to close the book he's reading.

"Feeling better?" he asks, as Steve props himself against the wall.

"Better's not the word," he grinds out, blinking around the apartment. "You been here the whole time?"

"No."

"But you came back."

Sam nods. "Yeah."

Steve blinks, unsure what he's feeling apart from groggy. "Was I out long?"

"Fourteen hours."

Steve shuts his eyes blearily; opens them again only to trudge further into the living room. Sam shuts the book with a snap and kicks himself out of the chair, gesturing at the kitchen table. "Sit down," he says, moving toward the fridge and rolling up his sleeves.

"I'm not hungry," Steve says.

"Still need to eat." Sam pulls a plate out of the fridge and tugs the plastic wrap off it as he moves to put it on the table. It appears to be a quiche of some kind.

"Sam." Steve shuts his eyes against the pounding of his injuries.

"I restocked your kitchen," Sam tells him. "Ready-to-make stuff. You're gonna look at it and cringe, but I tried to figure out what you used to eat, you know, back in the day. Familiar stuff. Comfort food." Sam points at a microwave that has newly appeared on the counter. "Use this. Follow the instructions on the package."

"I'm not irradiating my food before I eat it," Steve says irritably.

"When you're faced with a choice between spending four or forty minutes making food -- especially when you're feeling the way you are right now -- you're gonna change your mind. I ate this shit for months after Riley went down. It's not gonna kill you."

Steve blinks at him. Sam doesn't miss a beat, and doesn't allow Steve a moment of reprieve, either. He opens Steve's cupboards to show them packed full.

"Nonperishables. You'll be thankful all this is already here one of these days. I wrote down a number for grocery delivery if you're not up to it. I also bought some coffee, and a machine. If you don't drink it already, try it. It can get things going when the gears are grinding a little slower sometimes." Sam closes the cupboards again. "Prioritize your physio. If it's the only thing you do, fine; we can carry the rest for a while. But don't skip your appointments, man, I mean it. You're gonna regret it if you do."

Steve tries to process this, but it all feels like plaster in his head. "Why are you doing this," he asks eventually.

"Because you're pathetic," Sam says shortly. "And I recognize it. I've been where you are. You're gonna have to figure out how to get through this on your own, Cap; there's nothing anyone can say or do to make your situation different for you. But that doesn't mean you don't get support while you're doing it."

Steve just starts shaking his head. "I didn't ask you to do this."

"And you never would have. That's why I did it."

Steve gives a nasal sigh; stares at the food on the table.

"Eat that." Sam throws Steve's phone onto the table beside him. "Answer this." And when he puts a hand on Steve's shoulder and squeezes, Steve shuts his eyes against it, gratefulness dragging at the edges of his despair. "And go the hell to physio, Cap. This won't last forever, and you're gonna need your stupid giant body to be agile again at the end of it."

Steve presses both fists hard against the table and shuts his eyes, but when he eventually mutters, "Thanks, Sam," he means it.

And Sam knows it. He claps a hand to his back, and Steve doesn't hate the comfort. "Anything you need, man, I mean it. All you gotta do is ask."

Sam does _not_ ask him if he wants to talk about it. For that, among very many other things, Steve is also grateful.

  


  


  


It takes a long time to come back from. For weeks, Steve doesn't do much of anything.

It's harder than it used to be to put on a façade. It takes tremendous energy, _tremendous_ energy, to do pretty much anything. It's a herculean effort just to bring himself to answer the door, in fact, and when he does it is with dragging feet, with hatred for the fact that people always seem to want to talk to him as though he has any answers at all.

But they do. So he answers the door. And when he does, it is always with a smile, with a soft "Come in," as though he means it.

Mostly it's Sam, so he gets to stay quiet for a while after that. This usually lasts about an hour before Sam starts throwing things at him in the middle of cooking something, "just to check for signs of life." Steve doesn't always bother to catch them, but puts a little more effort in the heavier the objects get. 

(It still tweaks a bit to extend his arm fast enough to catch them, yet even about this, Sam seems happy. "You look better," he says, upon watching Steve snatch an orange tossed at fastpitch speed out of the air.

Steve only stares back at him, holding the orange in the air, his other hand pressing at his gut. "Thank you," he says dryly, while Sam slides him a cup of coffee and somehow expects him to catch _that_ with his hands full.

He does not. It shatters to the floor. Steve blinks slowly at it, and Sam laughs and throws a towel at him, only for it to bounce off his face and fall on the floor, too. Sam laughs harder. Steve even almost smiles.)

If Steve was quiet before, he's not sure what he's become. Taciturn. Reticent. Others seem fairly happy to carry conversations on their own, so Steve just… rides it. Whatever.

He sets alarms on his phone to eat three meals a day. He goes to his physio. He boxes a bit.

He stares at the water.

He goes to Fury's 'funeral.' It's not like he expects Bucky to be there, but he can't keep his head still. He hasn't the first idea about where Bucky might be, and yet some part of him is insistent that he must be _here_ , somehow, like he'd ever in a million years risk coming within ten miles of him if he doesn't want to be found.

And he doesn’t want to be found. If he did, he would be.

Yet Steve still can’t help looking.

This is why Steve doesn't leave the house anymore.

Natasha, bless her whole heart, hands him a file with Bucky's Hydra records in it. That distracts him enough, for a while, at least. Steve stares down at its contents; tries not to let the pound of his heart betray his apprehension.

He retreats to his apartment as soon as he’s able. He reads over the file again and again; learns of all of Bucky's deployments. Most of them are unremarkable, but a few stand out --

( _1963 -- Dallas, Texas, USA -- target: John F. Kennedy_  
_1991 -- Long Island, New York, USA -- target: Howard Stark_  
_2009 -- Odessa, Ukraine -- target: Shahram Amiri_ )

\-- and it's enough to make Steve…

It's enough to slow him down again. If the sun sets, Steve doesn’t notice.

Sam in his periphery. The sun rising again, that haunting red.

"I don't know what to do anymore," Steve admits, voice quiet and small. 

But Sam looks at him with clear eyes and says: "Then let me do it. Just for a while."

Sam tries to tug the file out of his hand. Steve resists, at first.

But then he lets go.

He lets _go_.

He lets go.

  


  


  


  
**B A R G A I N I N G**  
_december 2014_   


  


Bucky is no longer in the United States. That much becomes quickly obvious. 

Bucky is also not in Crimea. They thought he was, but the relevant address was burned to the ground when Steve got there. Steve found this a little extreme. He even said so, aloud, as he stood in the middle of the lot trying to appear inconspicuous as he kicked aside ashen remains: "This seems a little extreme." He'd hung around for a while anyway, looking for evidence that Bucky might've been there _once_ ; but, finding nothing, Steve huffed his frustration and went to his safehouse and tried to be _present_. 

After some investigation, it seems to Steve that the fire was more likely caused by the disruptions of rebellion than necessarily by Bucky trying to eliminate any trace of himself. Still, it's hard to know what he'd do to stay hidden. Frustration drags at him – frustration with himself; frustration with Bucky. Even though he knows why he’s not finding him, fault still thrums within him, as though he is responsible.

And isn’t he? 

The latest image keeping Steve awake at night is the one where he grabs the side of the train instead of reaching further for Bucky’s hand.

Bucky is not in Algeria, either. Sam said the relevant address was sparsely occupied by decrepit furniture, a stack of paperbacks from the '50s, and what Sam would only describe as "hacker stuff, I don't know." Upon consultation with Natasha they eventually figured out that the suite's occupant had just used an extremely outdated method of stealing internet, using actual cords strung wildly around the room. Natasha found the photographs of the setup extremely charming and seems to have saved them to her phone, but none of it was useful for figuring out where he’d go next.

Bucky is not in France. Bucky is not in Greece. Bucky is not in Turkey.

He would feel like more than a horse's ass to keep dwelling on this if it was only him pushing on. It is clear, after all, that Bucky doesn't want to be found; it is clear that until that changes, they won’t find him. And if he didn't keep turning up leads every couple of months -- if there weren't _murmurs,_ as Natasha puts it, among the intelligence community that seemed worthy of investigation -- Steve wonders if he might have been able to accept it. To leave him alone.

But nothing with Bucky has ever been clean, and this is no exception. If there’s even a _chance_ of running into Bucky, even by fluke…

Though he doesn’t know why, Sam seems just as committed to finding Bucky as Steve is.

At first Steve had been dragging himself through enough mud on a daily basis to think Sam was just paying it forward -- doing for Steve what he wished someone had done for him when he’d been struggling after Riley went down. But the thing is that in order to get to the bottom of why Sam wants to find Bucky so bad, Steve has to actually start a conversation about why he _himself_ wants to find Bucky so bad, and he's not so ready for that. He assumes Sam has a degree of detail anyway, having sorted through a certain amount of Captain America history while Steve was remembering basic executive function; and even if he hasn't, it's also become painfully apparent that Sam and Natasha have a rich relationship apparently based primarily on text-message insults and emoji chains that probably also means they have a genuine conversation from time to time. 

So even if he knows the mission is recklessly personal, Sam more than goes along with it. If Nat makes an occasional stop when she happens to be in some neighbourhood or other, Sam takes _initiative_ when it comes to the search for Bucky. Hell, he takes it over entirely, sometimes, when Steve feels too defeated to do it himself.

And especially given that Sam also doesn’t bother to conceal a certain degree of open exasperation when it comes to Bucky, the level of commitment he shows to tracking him down doesn’t really… make sense.

Steve rounds on him once to say as much, but manages only some perplexed stare.

"What?" Sam asks eventually.

Something sticks in Steve’s throat. He shakes his head. Sam waits, blinking at him. 

"Why are you still -- doing this,” Steve says at last. “Helping me."

Sam leans back in his chair and steeples his fingers against his chin. "Why do you do any of this? Why do you do a single goddamn thing that you do? You don't have to, you know. You woke up sixty-five years too late, and within months you had launched right back into the fight. Why bother, Cap? Why be Cap?"

Steve swallows against whatever it is that pools in his gut. "Because it's what I do,” he says eventually.

"Is that a good enough reason?"

Steve shrugs. "Do I need a better one?"

He didn't say it to make an impact, but somehow, it does. Sam blinks hard, then stares, as though Steve's words resonate within him.

Hours later they agree -- without having once discussed it -- that Sam will hit up Poland the next day on a lead. Compartmentalization is one of those useful 21st century skills he’s learning how to master, and not having to talk about all this – to just be accepted, to find agreement, without exhausting himself in the process – is a relief. 

It's not that Steve doesn't _want_ to look for Bucky, after all. It's much more that he's terrified what'll happen when he does. It's that -- if Bucky wants to be found, someday -- maybe it's better if it's Sam that finds him. 

If there's anything Steve understands for _certain_ about the situation, after all, it's why all of their leads wind up dead: no one will find Bucky until he wants to be found -- _unless_ Bucky makes a catastrophic mistake. And on that day, Steve doesn’t want to be the one to come across him. There’s no sense in which that would end well. 

If Steve’s following a memory, Sam is hoping for the mistake. 

He’s not sure what it says about him that he lets Sam take the lead on this anyway.

Bucky may not be quite himself, but he's at least not actively causing harm. Not noticeably. And that's almost enough to allow Steve to both step back and to help him sleep at night. 

_Almost._

Steve finds the nights grow very, very long these days. He traces patterns in the ceiling for how the expanse of it reminds him of the sea, and tries to will his eyes to close until the sun burns red with warning.

  


  


  


  
**D E P R E S S I O N**  
_march 2015_   


  


It’s a good thing that the Asgardian booze only shows up when Thor does, because otherwise Steve might be a much sadder drunk than he is capable of being when Thor is thumping him on the back with his trademark enthusiasm. 

Thor always insists on drinking on the roof of Stark Tower. “A beautiful view," he says. 

“It’s too loud,” says Steve. 

“It is no such thing,” says Thor. “Join me if you wish.”

It is much easier to fly up there via hammer, it turns out, than it is to parkour it. 

Steve doesn’t very often feel like the small version of himself he left behind in Brooklyn anymore, but a hint of it always seems to come back when Thor’s around. It’s comforting, in a way. Steve doesn’t mind this sort of nostalgia -- the feeling of shared burdens. He finds he even seeks it out a bit; puts in the time and energy to be around Thor when he does show up. He allows himself to lean back a bit. To carry a little less.

For all the ways that Steve feels closed off, Thor is the opposite. He is the most open of books, easy to get along with -- honest, earnest, unconcealing. He answers all of Steve’s questions about Asgard, and Steve handily senses it’s neither the first time he’s answered them nor something he at all minds doing again.

Only--

“Enough about me,” Thor booms. Steve finds a way to look at his watch without appearing rude. “I know so little about you, Captain. America was very different seventy years ago, was it not?” 

_Bucky, smiling around a crooked tooth, tossing a penny on his thumb over and over with such casual arrogance that Steve wanted to kiss him, right there in the middle of the cobblestoned street, so Bucky would run that thumb along his cheek instead._

“A penny went a lot further,” Steve says, and then gives himself over to the collapse of his throat.

Thor always sustains a deathly silence following comments like that. Steve never knows what to do with that. But then he’ll make this noise in his throat and hand the flask over, so Steve figures he can handle it, as long as it ends.

“Very well,” Thor says, and this time the hand on his back is gentle and commiserating. “Perhaps next time. Although you should know,” he adds, ignoring Steve’s eye-roll that the issue hasn’t been dropped already, “that you are not alone in feeling responsible for the ill deeds of another.”

And that’s all very fine and well, Steve thinks. That is all very fine and well to say. But the problem is that he _is_ responsible; it is not a matter of feeling. 

It was right there in his Hydra file, that they gave Bucky a serum, too – a modified version of what they gave Steve, _explicitly intended_ to make him Hydra’s super-mascot. 

Steve’s _counterpart._

Hydra had constructed the Winter Soldier in Steve’s image.

If Steve had just stayed _home--_

“Consider my position,” Thor says, interrupting his thoughts. “I am still searching for the source of the mass destruction my brother unleashed on a planet that was not even my own.” His eyes find Steve’s, as though to convey his already stark sincerity with yet more intention. “My responsibility is now not only to Asgard and to Earth, but to the universe at large -- and yet, not only can I not find the weapon responsible for all this damage on a single measly planet, but I have not yet even succeeded at making it up to those I have hurt in this very establishment.” 

When Thor looks at him, there is only a hint of sadness at his brow. He is not destroyed by this the way Steve is. He is not forced to a halt by cement in his shoes and a vice pressed at his lungs. Steve does not understand it.

“But still I search,” Thor adds. “And so shall you.”

“Why?” Steve asks immediately, as desperate for an answer as he is suddenly certain Thor has one. “Why don’t you just _walk away_? Why doesn’t either one of us just--”

“I cannot,” Thor says simply, when Steve is forced into silence by that squeeze in his chest. 

It is, somehow, a complete answer without answering a thing. Steve hates him for it. He feels suddenly like he has to get out; notices the humming at his fists, begrudges the weight in his gut. 

He thrusts the flask back in Thor’s direction; decides he’s subjected himself to enough of this for tonight. “I’d better go.” 

“Go where?”

“Home.”

“So you may return to solitude?”

Steve shrugs; shoves his hands in his pockets. “There’s something I gotta do.”

“Stay a while longer,” Thor says, but it sounds like a decision more than an invitation. “If you are to be mournful, at least be mournful in company.”

“No thanks.”

Thor gives him a difficult smile, as though seeing the way Steve feels younger. “There is one fundamental difference between your situation and my own, Captain,” Thor says, trying for wizened. “It sounds as though you knew a good man. I -- did not. My brother was never good.” That peaceful smile, that acceptance, that makes Steve burn with envy. “Why not sit and tell me about your good man?”

Steve shakes his head; looks out over the New York skyline. “Thanks for the drink,” he says, and strides toward the edge of the roof.

His hands catch him a split second later against the side of the building--

_\--fingers extended long over the side of the railcar, but then gripping tight, selfish, to its ledge --_

\--and he takes his time in leaping down, the concrete sending lightning through his shins when he takes the final thirty feet without resistance.

Steve apologizes to Thor the next day; accompanies him on a recon mission for the sceptre, just for something to do. And if he follows up on a lead on Bucky in St. Croix, he can surely justify it by saying it’s on his way home.

The lead turns up nothing, of course; but for the first time in months, Steve lingers, just a bit, and imagines Bucky pushing his way down the busy street as he leaves the port, his jaw set the way it was for the whole duration of the war.

Steve smiles, the sad thing, and allows himself the luxury of holding it for once. 

It’s almost satisfying when there’s no one there to scold him for it, but in the end he finds he misses the sound.

  


  


  


“Can I ask you something?”

Ominous words out of Natasha, these days, but there’s a peculiar tone behind them that makes Steve’s head snap up from where he’s bent over his microwave lasagne. She looks serious, standing across the room from him with some readiness in her posture, one hand propped carefully against the wall as though poised to take her weapon quickly. She’d come over for a flimsy reason, and Steve had assumed it was part of the Avengers’ elabourate ‘check on Steve’ rotation schedule they think he doesn’t know about, but from the way she’s half-glowering at him, gaze mixed with suspicion and begrudging vulnerability, he realizes she might have actually come over for a _selfish_ reason.

His lip quirks into a smile. It’s inappropriate. He looks down and forces his amusement back down again. “Anytime,” he says, and hopes to god he’s managing to inject sincerity into his tone. “You know that.”

She nods, takes in a sharp breath. “You, um…” She clears her throat. “You are _attracted_ to women, right?”

And maybe it’s the sludge in his brain talking, but it strikes him as the funniest thing anyone’s said to him in about six months. The laugh barks out of him, unexpected. “Why do you – oh, god, is this the date thing again?” He cringes. “Ugh – Natasha, look, I'm really not particular, but I am in _no_ shape to date anyone right now. Save your set-ups for when I can keep my eyes open for longer than ten minutes, would you?”

“I’m not trying to set you up again,” she says placatingly. “I’ve learned my lesson. For now.”

“Thank god.” 

“I ask because you had a thing with Barnes back in the day, so I thought—“

“ _Natasha_.”

“—I thought I’d _ask_. So you like women too. That’s all I wanted to know. Thanks.”

He looks up at her, slowly chewing his too-hot lasagne. “I thought this wasn’t about the date thing.”

“It’s –- not.” She breathes harshly through her lips. Her bangs fly into the air. Both of her hands are poised on her hips. It’s not hard to figure out she isn’t done here.

“Natasha,” Steve says, soft. “Talk.”

Her eyes find him, blazing and dead-on. “Would you find me attractive?” she asks – sudden; harsh. A beat; they both swallow. Then, easier: “You know… hypothetically.”

Steve slowly sets his food down onto the counter. “What are you suggesting?” he asks eventually.

“I’m not making a _pass_ , if that’s what you’re -- god, you’re making this difficult.”

Steve looks suspicious. Nat looks exasperated right back and says, “Just answer the -– listen. If you were in a different situation, and I was -– I dunno -- _hypothetically_ less, you know, cryptic of a person…”

“Uh-huh,” Steve intones slowly, and wishes desperately he was back in bed instead of in this intensely awkward conversation.

“Would you … you know … _hypothetically_ be interested in… you know.”

Steve allows himself to blink at her longer than he usually would, in part to encourage the suggestion never to bring this up again. “Hypothetically,” he repeats.

“Yes,” she says. But she looks so chastened and yet somehow so steady that Steve figures out she’s not really asking about him. 

Suddenly he feels bad for being evasive. He exhales with his whole chest and bows his head, forcing a steady breath before meeting her eye again. “Yeah, Nat,” he says, and offers a thin smile. “I told you before. You’re a hell of a catch. I don’t know how you’re single now.”

A purse of her lips to one side. “I could say the same thing about you,” she says, voice suddenly smooth.

“Uh-uh. We’re beyond that now, you and me. What’s this really about?”

Natasha rolls her eyes, as though annoyed with herself for an unsuccessful deflection. “I’m just wondering how to present myself as a romantic... option to someone. I guess as someone whose identity is also kinda tied up with the mission, I wondered if that… would matter. To you. That the mission is…” She gestures at him. “But I guess I kinda screwed that up, because if you’re the same as me, then of course you wouldn’t care. Confirmation bias. So forget I said anything.”

“Hey,” Steve says, soft. Natasha clicks her tongue; avoids looking at him. “You asked my advice, I’m gonna give it to you, all right? Look at me.” If reluctantly, she does. He smiles, and manages to do it genuinely. “They’ll accept pretty much anything about you if they’ve got half a brain in their head, Natasha.”

Her gaze sharpens; a beat passes. “Yeah?”

“You’re the first person to talk to me like a person on this side of the ice, so let me do the same for you. You’re flawed; who isn't? The right person will accept all of it. And you know what? To hell with them if they don’t.”

 _”The right person will love all of you, Steve,” Bucky had told him, hand pressed against his back as Steve lay with his face pressed against the pillows. It’s not that Steve had quite cared that women rejected him, per se, but that he was lonely, so_ goddamn _lonely, when Bucky wasn’t around. “Don’t settle until they do, and to hell with ‘em if they don’t.”_

Natasha takes a breath in through her nose and stares at him, as though accusing him of lying.

“Who are we talking about here?” Steve asks, blinking against the rise in his throat.

She scowls and says nothing.

“Okay, fine. It doesn’t really matter anyway. You’ve developed an interest. It sounds like you’re even willing to set aside some of that trademark avoidance for the sake of a potential relationship. I think that's great. But if anyone has a problem with the fact that you live on your terms, then they’re not worth it. So they don’t have a choice. Either they like that you’re mission-oriented, or they don’t, and you keep on being the person you are.” Steve shrugs. “Nothing to lose either way.”

She’s looking at him head-on, now, so Steve must have found a grain of truth somehow.

“I guess,” she says.

Steve forces a smile again. “Glad I could help.” 

“You did help. Sorry. Guess I’m not that gracious a person.”

“And I accept that. See how easy it can be?” He picks up his fork from where it had rested in the cardboard box and starts the painful process of eating again.

She quirks her lip at him. “Thank you.”

“No problem.”

A coy glance at him through her eyelashes. “So do you want to talk about—”

“No,” he interrupts immediately.

“Are you sure?”

“Dear god yes.”

“Because it seems like you could stand to—”

“No.”

“—take a bit of advice on—”

“Thanks; no.” He moves a forkful of lasagne to his mouth; gestures at himself and then at her, as though to convey just how unavailable he is to talk anyway.

“Okay,” she says, smiling at him as he chews. Then, as he swallows – “Are you okay?”

The question is sudden; a kick to his gut. He averts his gaze. “Aren’t I always?” he mutters into his food.

Natasha sighs and steps forward, collapsing into the seat at the breakfast bar with a sigh. “Fine. I believe you. About me, I mean, not you, you’re obviously a disaster.” Steve smiles around another mouthful of cardboard food. “But if I screw this up, I’m blaming you and also moving in. Fair warning.”

Steve swallows. “You’re not moving in. You couldn’t handle that.”

“You’re saying you could?”

“You’re forgetting I shared a bedroom with Bucky for four yea—”

He freezes. Natasha blinks up at him. Neither one of them knows what to do with the sudden intimacy of admission.

“You wanna go grab a drink somewhere?” Steve says quickly, when his voice comes back to him. He’s suddenly clambering to get out, to be _anywhere_ but here – to be anything but alone with this feeling that’s strangling him.

Fortunately, he can more than trust Natasha feels the same way. “Yes,” she says at once, and gets to her feet.

They split two sizeable pitchers of sangria at a grill half a block away, both of them languishing in silence for nearly three hours in the mid-Spring sun; and as far as Steve’s concerned it is absolute perfection. But that strangling feeling doesn’t leave him, and before they part ways he suddenly finds he's hooked an arm around her neck and holds her close to him, hoping she can't feel the heavy beat of his heart in his chest. 

From the way she presses a fond hand against his back, Steve knows she at least doesn't hate it. So there is that, at least, to file away under reasons to persevere.

  


  


  


“You’re a fella of two extremes, you know that?”

Steve had looked up at Bucky, looked at him where he was lounged with his feet up on the windowsill, one of Steve’s books propped in his hands. It had been an early spring day, really too cold not to wear a jacket, but there on the fire escape Bucky’d shed his shirt anyway, and Steve had drawn his bare outline in the orange and yellow hues of the afternoon.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re either going a mile a minute or you’re dead stone.” Bucky had looked up at him; chewed on nothing, probably missing the tobacco Steve never let in. “You’ve been leaning over that pad of paper for an hour and I’ve barely seen you move at all. You ever try a halfway point? Try talking a normal amount at a normal volume for a normal amount of time?”

“No.” Steve had looked up only long enough to smile at him, but frowned suddenly at the way Bucky looked back.

“Good,” Bucky said; then, setting the book aside, “come out here.”

“I’m drawing,” Steve had scolded, and looked back down at his page.

“Yeah? What’re you drawing?”

“You.”

“Why’s that?”

“Why,” Steve had said, then looked up with a quirk of his mouth. “You’re beautiful, Bucky.”

Bucky’s stare, setting hard.

“Come out here,” he’d said again, his voice growing coarse.

“Can’t draw you then.”

“You’ve drawn me a hundred times.”

“Two hundred, probably. Not near enough.”

“Rogers.”

“I gotta hand this in tomorrow.”

“I’m trying to tell you something.”

“Then say it already. It’s cold out there. You want me to catch ill again?”

“Never again in your life.”

“Then leave me alone.”

A pause; then -- “I love to watch you draw, you know that? But I want you to come out here more, so will you already?”

“I love you, Bucky,” Steve said, and smiled at the shock on Bucky’s face. His heart had pounded so hard, so hard, but it had been the good way, like this was a risk worth taking. “I love you and I want to finish drawing your stupid beautiful body before the light dies. Will you let me? Will you? I promise I’ll come out then.”

Bucky must have swallowed four times before saying, “All right,” and then he’d stared at Steve for the full twenty minutes that followed without moving; and by the time Steve finally came to be done, finally captured that look Bucky’d been giving him for the better part of an hour whilst stubbornly pretending to read a book, it was really too cold to be outside, but he went anyway. Steve went anyway and he let himself be taken into Bucky’s lap and kissed stupid, just as the night wrapped itself closed around them, and Bucky’s lips had formed the words that his throat never managed and Steve had been happy, so happy, with his hands pulling at Bucky’s hair like the world was theirs.

  


  


  


  
**H O M E S I C K N E S S**  
_(not an official stage, Steve knows, but he might write someone about looking into it)_  
_may 2015_   


  


"You find a place in Brooklyn?" 

Sam isn't challenging Steve to rise to the occasion as he usually does. There is a quirk in his brow, a smooth veneer to his voice that Steve recognizes from his own habits of concealment. 

Steve turns his head away; smiles that thing everyone hates. "I don't think I can afford a place in Brooklyn," he says, unsure where to focus himself.

It's been a year without Bucky. It's been three and a half years without Bucky. It's been seventy years and six months without Bucky, and yet here Steve still is.

Brooklyn is so expensive, now. So expensive.

"Well," Sam says, and smiles at him in that same cryptic way. "Home is home, you know?"

Steve is forced to cut his gaze away for what's thrashing in his gut. When he finally looks askance at Sam again, he sees him caught in something. _An uncertainty. A sense of loss._

He forgets he has an ally, sometimes. He's made it so easy on himself to believe he’s alone.

"Why'd you retire?" Steve asks him suddenly, turning to him with a striking desire to know.

Sam looks at him sharply. “You know why.”

“I have a general understanding. I’m asking for specifics.”

Sam stares at him, as though debating not giving an answer; but then he sends his gaze casting over the party below them and says, "I think it's a hard thing to watch someone you care about go down and still think the fight's worth fighting -- especially when you were right there and you couldn't do a damn thing to stop it. Don’t you think?” 

Oh, _Jesus_. Steve clenches his fist. "You really don't think you're an Avenger?" he says, suddenly ferocious with the desire to make Sam believe he is.

"I think," Sam says again; but then he stops and shakes his head. When he smiles, Steve recognizes it as something taken out of a place of wretched, unrelenting sadness. "I think I'm looking around at this party and I'm wondering what the hell I'm doing here." He tips his beer in Steve’s direction. “Same as you, I guess.”

"Well, you're here because I invited you. You have a place here, Sam. You might be the only one of us who really _chooses_ to be here. That makes you more of an Avenger than anyone else."

A pinch at his mouth, a swallow in his throat; but then Sam looks at him, gratitude flickering in his eyes, and Steve smiles at him and tenses a hand at his shoulder.

_A hand at Bucky's shoulder, to bring a smile out from the glower he carries with him like spare rounds._

A spark in his gut; Steve withdraws his hand as though burned. 

Sam's gaze flickers to it, then up to Steve's eyes, but he doesn’t say anything. It’s then that Steve starts to figure out that Sam never asks questions because he can already see the answers plain as day on his face.

"You want another drink?" Steve says, turning himself away; and then he pushes off from the railing without bothering to wait for an answer, not caring what it looks like to do it.

  


  


  


When Thor had gathered the Avengers to collect the Sceptre, Steve had been willing enough to show up. But the fact of those _enhanced_ starts to needle at him; grow thick under his skin. It’s a thrumming in his chest, like his heart’s gone tachycardic again.

Since when is human enhancement this… prevalent?

 _Since him._

Isn’t it?

The scorecard is getting embarrassing.

If Steve were a person who found things interesting these days, he might find it interesting that no one has figured out what the hell Erskine did to him in the first place. He might find it interesting that Banner, brightest mind this century, got it so dramatically wrong as to yield a monster of destruction in his wake. Given all the people he’s unearthed in the last three years alone who are meant mirror him, there must be hundreds yet that he doesn’t know about; that he may never meet. He knows how science works; there may be hundreds alone who have died in the process of trying to be made into _him_. 

Banner, insanely, is among the _lucky_ ones.

Some days, Steve doesn’t think the universe could possibly have a plan. But of all the people to come closest to reflecting what Steve had had done to him, the fact that it’s _Bucky--_

_October 1943_  
_Subject #381: James Buchanan Barnes, b.1917, Brooklyn, USA_  
_United States Armed Forces #32557058. Rank: Sergeant_  
_Serum Integration Attempt #349: Partial success_  
_Regeneration and Metabolism: Accelerated 300%_  
_Strength: Enhanced 200% ___  
_Resilience: Peak capacity; demonstrates high degree of vigilance and discipline, even when deprived of sleep and sustenance. No change to physique, but no adverse physical effects observable – key to future integrations?_

Should he be thankful that Bucky is not Bruce? Should he be thankful that he is not like the Maximoffs? Should he be thankful that he’s at least alive; that he hasn’t been lost to the annals of time?

He gives Maria a dead stare when she updates him on the Maximoffs, unable to beat down the bile in his throat. 

“What kind of monster would let a German scientist experiment on them to protect their country?” he asks her; and it is, whether he meant it as such or not, a genuine question. What kind of a monster, after all, would cause _this_? Who would willingly volunteer himself to open a door to moral bankruptcy like this? Who -- in unabashed bullheadedness; in a misguided bid to protect the only person who’d always shown up for him -– would volunteer to open the door to the very research that would cause that same person the greatest imaginable harm?

_Suggestibility in subject is high. Susceptible particularly on the subject of childhood friend Steven Grant Rogers (b.1918, Brooklyn, USA) -- makes him an ideal candidate. Bond with Rogers appears uncharacteristically strong. Advanced weaponization of subject, if possible, best explored by exploiting this weakness._

Steve is not afforded the luxury of relief. Steve will not be grateful.

He never would have thought he’d be carrying so much regret that Bucky had wound up alive. He never thought he’d spend every day wishing for anything but.

If Steve can’t make it right, what he unleashed on the world … he can at least try to limit the damage. He can show up. He _has_ to show up. This is penance for his hubris – to watch the fallout of his own bad decisions unfold in front of him, again and again and again and again.

Some days, he thinks the universe _does_ have a plan. Something this systemic, this nefarious, seems far too cruel to have been concocted by chance alone.

  


  


  


To this day Steve isn’t sure how or why he’d done it, but Bucky had ordered a blue jacket after Steve had pulled him away from Hydra. He’d managed to wear it the whole remainder of the war, and Steve had _loved_ it. Blue was something he’d only recently been able to see, and to see it on Bucky – to see his eyes jump out at him like that – had made Steve smile every time.

Steve hadn’t realized Bucky had noticed him doing it, smiling at him, until well into 1944. By then they’d found a peculiar rapport, one of companionable silences and sarcastic exchanges interspersed with sincerity of strategy and unreasonable levels of avoidance. But one day Bucky had sighed, the noise furious in his throat, and looked at Steve dead-on in the middle of assembling his rifle.

He’d had a kind of demand for honesty in his eyes that they didn’t use on each other anymore. Not since Steve got big and never told him. Not since Bucky wouldn’t talk about Hydra.

“What,” said Bucky, jaw clenching.

“What?” said Steve.

“You keep looking at me. I got something on my face or something?”

Steve had battled that smile again, then rolled his eyes to the sky, hating himself. “No. It’s just…” He’d gestured in the direction of the setting sun, but then suddenly shrugged, realizing there was nothing left to say here. “It’s nothing. Nevermind.”

Bucky’s eyes had flickered between Steve and the horizon. 

“Light’s good,” Bucky said, after a moment.

“Well… yeah.”

Bucky looked down at his rifle again. “You still notice that kind of thing?”

“Plenty.” Steve cleared his throat. “Your, uh, jacket. Is nice, by the way. Especially in this light. Matches your eyes, you know that?”

“Matches my –“ Bucky frowned suddenly down at himself, then up again. “Now wait just a second.”

Steve fought another losing battle against the smile on his face; forced himself to cut his gaze away.

“Whatever this is,” Bucky said, visible in Steve’s periphery gesturing at his height, “fixed your damned _colourblindness_?”

Steve had tried to find an answer, but the only thing he’d managed was a reluctant grin, fond and reckless. 

“Yeah,” he’d managed eventually, shrugging.

“So you can—“ Bucky had cut off, abrupt, and looked to the ground with his whole head.

How many times had Bucky asked why Steve never painted the sky, only for a pointed silence to follow? How many times had Bucky asked why the blue pencils were the longest in his set? How many times had he given Steve grief for always colouring his eyes grey, before clueing in two seconds too late as to why?

Bucky’s eyes dragged up to Steve’s, and both of them held long, tension thrumming between them.

“Should’ve guessed,” Bucky’d said. He’d gestured at Steve’s uniform. “Given that getup. Guess you always saw it as red, white, and grey before, huh?”

Suddenly, Steve hadn’t known what to do with his hands; they landed on his hips, crossed over his chest. “You’ve got nice eyes, Buck. Always did, I mean, but…” A breath of anxious laughter. “Guess mine are blue too. Different, though. Lighter. Who knew?”

“I did.”

“And yet you never thought to explain to me the colour of your eyes?”

“How the hell d’you expect me to explain _blue_?”

“You knew I could see some stuff. Reds. Lighter shades, darker… I might’ve understood that.”

“I wasn’t just gonna sit there and explain my goddamned eyes to you, Steve.”

Steve’s grin faded. He felt suddenly sorry. “I would have listened. I would have wanted to know.”

“Well, now I guess you do.”

“Well, I guess so.”

“Well, congrats.”

“Bucky…”

“Don’t _fucking--_ ” But the venom had dissipated as quickly as it had formed. A steadying hand had flown against Bucky’s forehead; the fist shook where it landed. “Just –- this isn’t –- let it drop, okay? I’m sorry you never knew my eyes before but it doesn’t seem like it mattered to anything anyhow.”

God, how Steve had wanted Bucky to acknowledge their relationship then. Three years with barely a touch seemed so much to wash away the four that came before it. Now, this: rejection; regret.

“Seems like we let a lot drop, Buck,” he said.

“Yeah." Bucky checked the load on his rifle unnecessarily, just to put his eyes somewhere else. “It’s almost like things aren’t the way they used to be, huh?”

Silence had stretched on between them, after that, until Steve had turned away and stepped out of the camp.

Bucky had been about four months from dying that day. Steve would give anything now to have been the courageous one back then.

  


  


  


Falling asleep has been hard for a while, but it only gets worse after Sokovia. He spends three months at the Avengers compound training the new recruits before he has to get out of there, thinking that somewhere quieter might make him feel... different, at least. If not quite better.

Each day, being at the compound, he is reminded that he is training others to operate as his soldiers. As his merceneries. As his _team_. 

Inasmuch as he’s done it before, that doesn’t mean he can protect a single one of them. It doesn’t mean there’s a guarantee he can offer. Not even if it means his own life.

So he makes a deal with himself. Three months. Three months of pretending like he knows what he’s doing. Like he _wants_ to be here, doing this all over again. Three months training his best friends to kill or be killed, knowing either one is likely. Again.

Then he takes a break.

The trouble is that once he gets home, there's nothing there to distract him. He had thought being alone would be easier, and it is, in respects; there is no one he’s emotionally accountable to, and that’s a relief. But not being busy is its own curse. Whereas he used to collapse into bed and know unconsciousness would take him eventually, sleep now eludes him entirely, despite a lingering exhaustion of long and longing days.

Steve spends the first nights staring at the ceiling, willing some providence to take him out of all of this noise. It never does. Sleep never once comes to him before the sun has risen. It is as though the night were endeavoring to claim him as its own.

And as frustrating as that is, it’s also kind of okay. Insomnia suits him; he likes the wee hours. He’s known sleep deprivation before. The year he was in art school, he was an insomniac of the most terrific sort. He had always felt he was bursting with energy. He got barely sick at all that year, as though his immune system had been bolstered by creativity and pencil on the page.

Of course, that had been the year he'd found it in him to stop asking questions and had just gone up and kissed Bucky instead. He’d done it on something between a whim and a prayer, sudden and terrified; but then Bucky had smiled, and _kissed him back._

So Steve may just as well have been fuelled by something else that year.

When Steve does sleep, he always dreams. It’s never pleasant. He prefers the insomnia. He dreams less when it's the sleep of total exhaustion, when he's pushed past the usual bounds of consciousness into day. He's pushing an envelope; he knows this. But if he isn't doing anything about it, at least he's self-aware.

After enough nights spent mapping the ceiling, Steve opts to spend them upright instead. He sits near a warm light and forces himself to remember angles and contours – traces graphite across the page through all hours of the night. It takes several days before his hand remembers how to move the way it used to, and it's a while after that before he figures out he's improving; but he _is_ improving. This time spent unsleeping at least produces something. Pages and pages of drawings pile up on his beloved windowsill. He leaves something of himself behind each night.

He is afraid to add colour to them, the same way he's afraid of the encroaching yellow light of day.

_Bucky always took night watch._

It's been over a year since Bucky came back and it's been a few months too since Steve stopped looking for him. Sam's been out a few times; Natasha swung by Prague, once, when she was nearby on an intelligence grab. But, possibly interpreting Steve's silence on the subject or possibly feeling as run down as he is, they seem to be letting the pursuit drop as well.

They've had plenty else to concern themselves with anyway. They don't need his problems on top of their own.

_"Nothing worth reporting," Bucky'd always say as he kicked himself hard down onto his bedroll. This was never true; Steve knew this. He would prompt him, "Report anyway," because that was the only way to get Bucky to talk when he was also sober; so Bucky'd add dutifully, "three headshot kills, clean,” or, "tried to get a guy in the leg instead but figured out too late he'd probably bleed out first, so I did him properly."_

_There’d be the occasional: "I mean it, Rogers, nothing but me and the birds"; but it’d be said in some sing-songy tone that sat bitter in Steve’s mouth, so the news of a morning without death never sounded that good, in the end._

Steve dreams of Brooklyn most often. This is what he draws, too, in his long, sleepless nights. He draws fire escapes climbed illicitly; he draws store faces, markets, all of it from memory. Not many photos have survived, and those that have don't seem real somehow. Photos of his own past look to Steve like drawings by someone else, someone who'd never been there. He doesn't like to look at them. He can draw his own memories just fine, and so he does. He draws faces and places he'd thought he'd long since left behind him. He thinks forlornly about buying some coloured pencils, to fill in that shade of pink or that hue of orange. But this always leads him to throw the pad of paper away from him, as though the thought had betrayed the image in some way.

Daybreak always finds him eventually, either way.

_Daybreak always came, and so too did Bucky – replaced by Morita on watch, the sun driving him to rest._

_Bucky would rarely sleep right away, even if they were going to make a push forward in a few hours, and Steve would always wake up early to meet him. Bucky would give him a tight smile that Steve still didn’t recognize, and he’d give Steve his non-report, and Steve would be filled warm to see him every time. It was as though Bucky or the sun instilled him with confidence for the coming mission. He never told him that. There was so much he never said._

Bucky's face is harder for his pencil to grasp. It's not that Steve doesn't remember what Bucky looks like; it’s more that his hand is offering resistance to drawing him. He avoids it for a long time, preferring still life; but then one night he forms the curve of his lip from easy muscle memory just while thinking about him, then sketches the way his jaw sits at 110 degrees. 

It’s two small details. It’s a flawless transcription from the annals of his mind. It's enough, for one night. 

_"Enough about me," Bucky'd said, amicably enough, when he'd returned with the sun one October morning. "Report on_ you, _why don’t you, Rogers? I never asked you when the wedding was. You and Carter got a date set, or you still hung up on flowers?"_

Steve dreams of New Jersey, once. A house on a street, where Peggy had moved with him. It had been 1956; there was a nice car in the driveway. Children, three of them – the older two the kind of age that suggested they’d have wasted no time in conceiving after the war. All of them were brunette, like she was. They’d had her eyes, too. 

He draws them, the night after he dreams them. He names them: Sarah, for his mom; Rebecca, for Bucky's sister. James, maybe. Depending. 

_"We're not getting_ married, _" Steve had said shyly, smiling down at his map for reasons that eluded him. He’d missed this, talking with Bucky, but it felt out of place to be talking about this. It was so hard to know when Bucky would withdraw, when the coin would flip to the other face and they’d go back to pretending they didn’t used to share everything._

_"That so?" Bucky’d said._

_"That's so. We haven’t even been on a proper date."_

_"You got plans for it, though."_

_"Plans enough."_

_Silhouetted in that orange light, that_ wretched _light of autumn dawn, Bucky had nodded and nodded and looked at his knees. "Just remember what I always said, okay pal? Promise me.” A flash of blue through his eyelashes, as his eyes flickered high and set low again. “You don't want to let a good opportunity go to waste."_

Steve spends one night drawing New Jersey -- thinking of the life he might've had if he'd survived. Draws Bucky as his neighbour – his hair slicked back the way it had been before the war, his chest fuller, restored by nutrition.

_It had been six weeks before Bucky would die -- one of the last mornings like this, when Bucky had arrived with the sun, as cloudless as the day, and offered Steve a shy smile. "You deserve the world, Steve,” he’d said, and he’d almost sounded like his old self, with a hint of softness in his tone. “If this goddamn war has proved anything at all, it's simply that."_

Steve gets stuck drawing Bucky again and again, as transfixed as he ever was by the way his cheeks set so high.

_Steve, years earlier, pulling some book off Bucky’s shelf to find it full of folded drawings, each of them between a different page – all of them from Steve. Each and every drawing Steve had ever given him, held in one boring dictionary for safekeeping._

_Steve had slid the book back on the shelf hastily, made sure it looked undisturbed, and never brought it up to him; but he hadn’t quit smiling for a solid month after that, either._

When Steve had finally gotten sick at the end of that first year of art school, it had been the only thing that had pushed him through – to know that Bucky believed in him, in his talent, enough to keep all that. 

Now, Steve draws him until daybreak, as though hoping the rising sun will bring him with it. Steve draws him until 5am. Steve draws him until 4am, 3am, 2am. Steve draws Bucky as he was before war claimed him, when something pulled at his mouth that Steve never understood but that made him want to die in some small way just to see it. 

He draws him in sunrises and sunsets, and tries to remember the way they always brought out an honesty in Bucky unparalleled in the extremes of the day.

Eventually Steve figures out he can sleep something dreamless, approaching restful, once he puts out a decent drawing of him. Just a small thing, something he’d like; something he’d put in that dictionary, something that honours him as he was. 

He finds he doesn’t draw Brooklyn much, suddenly. 

Bucky’s always been so much more like home to him than any city ever has.

  


  


  


  
**D E N I A L**  
_may 2016_   


  


The look Bucky gives Steve is one of suspicion. The look Steve gives Bucky is one of utter disbelief. 

“Do you know me?” Steve manages, and somehow keeps his voice steady.

A beat; a heavy swallow, something _devastated,_ then the rise of Bucky’s chin. Appraisal. _Assessment._ Steve recognizes this; sees it as tactical, as measured. Sees it as the Bucky he got to know during the war.

He does not see the Winter Solider.

“You’re Steve,” he says. There’s something in his voice that brings Steve to the very brink of breaking down. His breath stills in his chest. “I read about you in the museum.”

Oh, _god._ It’s a filthy lie. Steve can hear every grain of emotion in his voice, even if he doesn’t know what any of it means. If Bucky really didn’t know him, he would be _fleeing._

Bucky is not fleeing. Bucky is standing right in front of him.

It’s been two years of nothing. Two years of fearing the worst. Two years of hating himself, of expecting disaster, of knowing too much and not enough, and Bucky is—

Bucky is alive. Bucky -- _Bucky_ \-- is standing here in front of him. Bucky had known Steve was in his apartment, and he'd _walked in anyway._

He’d known he was coming; that they were all coming. And Bucky is still here.

Steve doesn’t feel like himself. A steadiness becomes him that does not belong to him. The words that come out of his mouth don’t feel like his own.

“I know you’re nervous,” he says. “And you have plenty of reason to be. But you’re lying.”

Bucky doesn’t deny it. Pain flickers over his face. “I wasn’t in Vienna. I don’t do that anymore.”

That time, Steve believes him. That’s all it takes. If Bucky’s still here, Steve decides, he won’t leave either.

Not if there’s the slightest chance he can bring them home.

  


  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The other two fics of this series -- [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6787765) and [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6875353) \-- fit between Chapter Two (this chapter) and Chapter Three (the next chapter). It isn't necessary to read those before moving on, but if you're feeling like there's a Civil War-shaped gap here that should've been filled, it's more that I filled it elsewhere. I tried my best to make the transition smooth, but if we're in Wakanda a bit soon after this, all the in-between stuff happened in those two links.


	3. Chapter 3

  
**A C C E P T A N C E**  
_(or surrender)_  
_june 2016_   


  


Here it is, at the crux of it: Steve still loves him. He probably never stopped. 

He understands that he destroyed Bucky's life, but that doesn't stop him from wanting to make it easier to bear. It's been five years since he's been in the same room as Bucky for longer than it took to be punched severely in the face, and yet he recognizes the pound of his heart with immediacy. 

_This is it,_ his chest screams, in the very course of drowning him. _This is what it is to be in love._

Okay then, he thinks. So be it.

After leaving the Siberian Hydra facility, they spend two days in Moscow. Bucky is the same. Bucky is so different. Steve does what he can to take him in without staring. The scarification at his shoulder draws his attention and repels it at once. The graft is imperfect, as though hasty, or maybe as though the damage it took to attach a cybernetic arm to a human being was finally more than the serum knew how to heal.

Bucky's bruising does not fade as fast as Steve's, but it's not bad. Bucky does not die of internal bleeding. Bucky is still beaten to shit. Tony got some solid shots in, or maybe T'Challa did. The humming at Steve's fists, the kind that used to lead him screaming into alleyways, only starts to eke away when Bucky doesn't pass out again; when they manage to get some food in him. It still doesn't stop Steve from feeling rabid and alight, as though compelled by some drive he can't identify or quell, even as calm becomes him.

For the first time in years, Steve feels like he is where he's meant to be.

He can't figure out whether Bucky really wants him to be there. He can't figure out how much Bucky is merely tolerating him. Things feel _possible_ between them -- a decided upgrade from the quinjet, when every second had passed in agony. It's not quite that they feel okay, or all that natural; it's just that it's tolerable. It's reasonable, this tension. It's familiar, sensible. It's already more than Steve deserves.

He doesn't want to leave. Bucky doesn't ask him to. So in agony and ecstasy, not for a second confident it's the right decision, Steve resolves to stay.

He keeps a firm handle on calm and stability. He'd call it a miracle if he didn't understand it completely.

The trouble is that it doesn't last. Once Bucky falls asleep -- once Steve allows his eyes to set on him, on the slow rise and fall of Bucky's chest, on the anguish etched on his features even in sleep -- Steve's veneer starts to crumble.

It has been five years without him. It has been seventy-two years without him. It has been seven or seventy-five since last they touched with intention. Steve stays awake for as long as he can, determined not to let this time slip away from him unmarked; but at some point, watching Bucky, not daring to reach for him, he must fall asleep.

When he wakes up again it is far too early, long before the sun, his eyes flinging open with sudden panic that Bucky might've left him in the middle of the night. 

Bucky hasn't left. Bucky is still here. He sleeps the sleep of the damnably exhausted, tense and facedown, snoring softly into the wall.

Here is where the switch flips -- when the pound in Steve's heart steers him away from steadiness, brings him instead to ruin. His eyes grow suddenly hot. He does not reach out, but he wants to; he hums with it, he shakes against the cloying desire to pull Bucky in close, just to make sure he stays here a little while longer. 

He lies as still as he can and looks at him, hands clenched in the sheets.

This is what it is to be in love: to be caught in a hurricane, terrified, and to never seek shelter.

Here is a legacy Steve didn't expect: they don't know how to touch each other, even when they do. Steve manages _not_ to scan his hands over every inch of him, even when he's taking stock of Bucky's injuries. He presses delicate fingers to him instead, embodying the sort of caution he might've taken to defusing a bomb. 

But he thinks about it. He lets himself think about it. _Bucky within range._ His limbs shudder to steadiness every time his heart skates away with the urge to reach out. It takes so much effort not to let his focus slide sideways, in the idle moments; not to take Bucky's fingers between his own and say, _Remember this?_ But that doesn't mean he doesn't sketch out legitimate opportunities to find him anyway -- to let their knuckles brush while handing him something; to put a comforting hand at his shoulder when he's struggling.

There have been moments, too, when proximity has been necessary. Steve does his best not to think about these too hard, even if he always thinks of them anyway. They've had to carry one another out of battle. He's tended to Bucky's missing cybernetic arm more than once. They hadn't hesitated to build off each other in combat, either, sometimes using the other's tactics or form as elements of the environment.

Steve does not think about how they'd both seemed to figure out how each other moved out of instinct alone. Whether out of remembrance or intuition, they simply -- _knew_.

The same way they knew how to take the other in, when Steve kissed him in that lift.

The lengths Steve goes to just to avoid thinking about this. 

It was a mistake. It's one of the best mistakes he's ever made. It had lit something in him, something that was now guiding him still, and there'd been some element to Bucky's response that had helped convince him to stay, even when Bucky tried to push him to go. 

When Steve had kissed Bucky -- Bucky'd kissed him back. Bucky _more_ than kissed back. Bucky took what Steve had offered him and built on it, leaning into him and against him, as though he'd been just as pressed as Steve not to have done it sooner. It had been a mistake, no doubt about that, but if Steve started it then Bucky had turned it into --

 _Stop this._

Steve can't think about it. He presses a hand to his burning face and hopes to god Bucky isn't paying attention to him. He turns a fraction more away, makes an excuse to get something from the kitchenette in the back corner of Bucky's Moscow hideout, and _does not think about it._

It's just that -- there's so much they haven't needed much time to remember how to do. He can't help but wonder what else…

Steeling his fists against the beat of his heart, Steve stands on in the middle of that hurricane.

There's a lot, overall, that convinces Steve to just keep still -- to stay, to wait, to see what happens. He stands there and lets himself be taken in, on whatever terms that entails. He maintains four agonizing inches of distance from Bucky at all times. He takes every second of it direct into the pulse of him.

And that's -- just stupid, in a way. It would be easy enough to _ask_ Bucky what he wants from Steve; how to proceed, or what he should be doing. But the fact of it is that Steve's scared of the answer. Selfishishness is something he's only learned recently, but he's doing a great job of showing up an expert at it. He's pretty sure that what Bucky wants is for Steve just to leave -- for Bucky to be allowed to disappear again, to put all this behind him, regardless of how he'd responded to the fact of Steve's lips on his back in Siberia.

There's a lot that Steve finds himself accepting, but the thought of losing Bucky back into the impenetrable world is where he meets his limit. So Steve, being selfish, doesn't ask him a thing. He just steels himself, accepts what he can, and _waits._

Then they wind up using a stupid movie as a vehicle to argue about the very topic they're avoiding.

When Bucky finally explains why he hasn't left him behind -- it's the last thing Steve wants to hear.

Steve wishes he had just stayed selfish. He wishes he'd never found enough terrified courage to follow Bucky into the kitchenette and ask him the exact question he didn't want to know the answer to. Now Bucky's trying to convince him that going back into cryosleep is the right choice, and Steve's edge starts to overtake. He starts to lose that practiced calm, he's _angry_ , they don't deserve _this_. He pulls Bucky back by the arm --

\-- Bucky's hand is on his neck --

\-- Bucky is kissing him, hot and ferocious -- 

\-- and Steve gives himself over to it, so easily.

This is what it is to let the hurricane win; Steve will not seek shelter. He sets Bucky gentle atop the nearest available surface and presses against him, pulls him in, takes his clothes off with as much care as he's able. He refuses outright to try to hide from this moment. If this is what it is to be in love, he'll take it down until it forms a new part of him.

The winds surround him, surround them both -- roaring, ripping, resounding, relentless.

He holds Bucky through it as steady as he can.

  


  


  


Steve's weak heart meant he suffered chronically from low blood pressure and poor circulation, which meant in turn that he was always cold. His extremities would numb so easily, blood pooling in his hands and feet regardless of the season, and holding a pencil would quickly become too difficult to be worth it.

"Here," Steve would say in the winter months, and shove his feet under the cuffs of Bucky's pantlegs in search of at least a _partial_ reprieve.

"Hey!" Bucky'd say, and squirm away from him -- at least until, somewhere around 1935, he didn't bother anymore. Bucky would still grumble every time Steve inched his feet over in his direction, but more and more he'd be the one nudge against Steve with his toes when he'd notice him rubbing his hands together, as though actually inviting the press of Steve's clammy soles against his leg.

Bucky always ran hot like a furnace. It was a gift in the winter. Steve sought to set any part of himself against Bucky's skin, always appreciating the heat radiating off him no matter where they managed contact.

It was more of a burden in the summer, but they found a way to make it work. It was more likely Steve's hands set against Bucky in the hot season than his disgusting, sweating feet. Made thick and awkward, he found his fingers were more useful against the back of Bucky's neck than fumbling swollenly around a writing implement. Bucky, who was not susceptible to much but a disaster in humidity, seemed to accept this well enough. Sometimes, if occasionally, he would even curl up beside Steve, whimpering pathetically until Steve set his palm against his neck.

"How the hell do you manage to be so cold all the time," he'd say, when Steve's hands spread over Bucky's ever-scorching skin.

"I dunno," he'd reply, "how the hell d'you manage to be so hot?"; and it's not that he was thankful for these side-effects of his cardiac state, exactly, but it was more that he didn't especially mind this particular one. Steve would leaf through art books with his free hand while the other purported to cool Bucky down, and he'd switch off every so often, his thumb setting close and gentle against Bucky's hairline. 

They could pass hours this way, until the heat rolled back and Steve could maneuver his joints around a pencil again. Bucky would always sit up when Steve withdrew, stayed quiet and still for an oddly long time. Steve would take the opportunity to draw him, working to perfect that downward curve of his mouth, if only because he wasn't sure of another way to break the tension in the room.

Steve had always chalked it up to the weather, the fact that they tried to balance out their temperatures that way.

He started to get to know better after he and Bucky became more physically involved.

It was a captivating experience, to be taken in by Bucky Barnes. Bucky would seduce with his voice, then with his hands, before next introducing his mouth. He had this way about him, this energy, when he was trying to get somewhere with someone; it would start in dulcet tones, a phrase purred low in Bucky's throat. "Hey, Steve," he'd say, or even a more overt, "Whaddya say we mess around" -- and then entered his hands, those _damnable_ hands, gripping at Steve's hips or set against his back.

Bucky might set scorching palms high against Steve's fragile ribs. Bucky might tip Steve's face back, so he could kiss him, white hot. He might wrap his fingers around Steve's legs or his wrists -- might move with gentle pressures, pinky to pointer to thumb and back.

"I'm busy," Steve would say, only to be proven wrong when Bucky went on to introduce his tongue at his ear, or lips at his shoulder. The heat of him would be radiating against Steve so close and so fierce and Steve would always want to crawl into it, to let himself be held by it, for as long as Bucky would have him.

He loved that about Bucky, the welcome of his warmth. He loved it when Bucky's hands pulled Steve in, as though reeling him in out of the cold. He loved the spread of his hands when they enveloped his waist, when they gripped at his thighs -- as though to claim him, his heat a gentle brand. Bucky would drape himself over Steve's whole body while fucking into him, covering Steve's hands with his own, pressing his mouth between Steve's shoulders, blanketing him with his warmth in such a devastating way.

"So good for me, Steve," Bucky would always husk in his ear, his fingers spreading wide over Steve's chest. But Steve always felt that it was Bucky who was so good, too good, to him.

Bucky had held back on him all of those years. He hadn't known it until he pressed them against Steve's calves in the dead of the night, but it turned out that Bucky's feet got cold, too.

"Quit it," Steve would say; but then he'd take Bucky's feet in to warm them up anyway.

"Years of payback," Bucky would mutter, " _years_ , Rogers" -- and he'd curl flush behind him, collecting as much of Steve as he could to coax into his arms at once, giving Steve as much heat as he knew how, as often as he could, as though Steve deserved it.

The thing of it was that warmth blossomed as though radiant out from where Bucky touched him, growing deep and full _within_ him as much as without. So Steve never minded the cold seasons, when he barely even noticed that they had no money for heat.

  


  


  


Everything Bucky has shown him – his apartments, his tactics, the way he fights – has been a gift. Steve takes it all. He even accepts Bucky's anger, without hesitation, offering a measured patience in the face of it that he's certain only pisses Bucky off more.

Bucky's angry with him the whole way to Kiev. Steve sits with it, feeling more with every second than he thinks he has in the last two years combined. He'll take Bucky's anger if it means Bucky's still here. He'll take his false calm. He loves Bucky's plotting -- he'll take that too. He loves the way his instincts steady him through the anxiety. He loves his improvisations, and the way Steve gets body-checked when it's time to change direction. Steve gladly goes where Bucky steers him. There's not a single thing Bucky does that Steve casts aside.

They have a few hours in Kiev before moving on becomes a necessity. So Bucky says; Steve's not inclined to argue. But pretensions to sleep are readily shattered on arrival -- they waste no time in spiralling back into argument. Steve tries desperately to talk Bucky out of going back into cryo. Bucky, somehow, convinces him of its necessity. Steve holds fast to checking out T'Challa to see if he'll at least help, and if it's an uncomfortable compromise, it's one they both find they can live with.

Then, equally terrified of nothing and everything, they pull each other in.

In all of their interactions, Steve can clearly see the guards Bucky is keeping up. He can see the way Bucky turns from him, hides from him, when clarity of emotion threatens to break through. Steve thinks about telling him he can handle it -- that he's here for the full Bucky Barnes experience, that there's nothing he can show that would scare Steve away; that Steve's already seen the scariest parts of him and still, god help him, come running as soon as he's been able.

But it's just as true, in the end, that Steve's keeping parts of himself boxed away from Bucky. So it seems wrong to ask Bucky to show Steve all of him if he isn't prepared to do the same.

The second their skin meets, the guards always seem to fall away.

This time when Bucky kisses him, Steve doesn't hesitate.

There are differences in Steve, but there are in Bucky too. Bucky is more solid. Bucky is firmer, made broader by the serum or time. One arm is missing; that is obviously different. But the biggest difference is in how Bucky moves to be pulled in toward Steve's core, instead of the other way around. Despite two years on the front adjusting to Steve's new dimensions, Bucky seems both desperate to learn him by touch and unable to do so. His faculties seem abandoned in the face of raw need. 

It is -- so hard for Steve to keep it together, when Bucky's like this. He wants to soften this, to soften them, to draw this out long. Steve sets a hand over where Bucky's fingers clench at his shirt and brings them up to his lips. Bucky watches him do it, but then shuts his eyes when he does it again, and Steve can't stand to watch his brow crease like that -- like the gesture has ruined him, like it's too much to bear.

Steve steps forward and pulls him in. He starts scanning his lips against Bucky's, again and again. It's intimate; it pulls hard in him, at them both. Not kissing but wanting to, so bad. So bad.

Steve could live here, between anticipation and need. Bucky's hand grips at him, in threat or desire. 

"How are you like this?" Bucky mutters, voice cracked into shambles.

Steve cards his fingers between strands of Bucky's hair, almost smiling, almost kissing him. "Like what?"

"Like _this._ "

"In love with you?"

He shuts his eyes, as though pained by this. " _Steve._ "

"Every time you say my name, Bucky. Say it again."

Bucky says nothing. Emotion piques sour at the back of Steve's throat. 

"Say it again, Bucky, please."

A beat, then, quiet -- "Steve."

That rush, leaving him heady. Steve closes his eyes and leans in.

"Why are you _like this_ ," Bucky asks again. There's a break to it that Steve wants to take whole and mend. 

Steve brushes Bucky's lips with his, as though conveying through touch what words elude. "I am not afraid of this."

A flash of anger. Steve feels it break like a wave. "Why _not_?"

"I'm just not."

"This isn't -- right for you."

"You're right for me."

"Steve, _stop_."

He lets go at once.

Bucky's face registers the withdrawal and snatches at one of Steve's hands before he can get it away. "No," he gravels, "that's not what I--" and he puts Steve's hand at his back again before wrapping his fingers tense in Steve's hair; then he kisses him, deep, like his life's on the line.

Resolve is a fickle thing, keen to dissolve. The tremors wrack through them until Bucky's breath grows haggard. 

"Use some restraint for five fucking seconds," he mutters, when he manages to pull back.

"No thanks," says Steve.

"No goddamn different, are you?"

"Just done taking this for granted."

"We gotta go, Steve. We can't stay."

"We've barely arrived."

"We can't _be here._ "

He slides his hand slow along the line of Bucky's jaw. Bucky lets him tilt his face toward the ceiling, a break in his throat.

"Stay." It's a plea. "Stay for a minute."

After staring a second, closing his eyes -- Bucky nods. 

Steve lets himself give in to the drive to touch Bucky that's been beating under his skin since the first second he saw him. He strokes slow, gentle fingers down the curve of his throat. Bucky's breath halts. Steve loves it, loves him, so fiercely. He traces at his clavicle, brushing his fingerpads over collarbone. 

Bucky's grips at him. "Why are you doing this?" he whispers again.

Want is a river, driving fierce in Steve's chest. "You know why."

"You have a life of your own."

The laugh bubbles up horribly. "I have friends. A mission. But I'm not so sure I had a life."

"Well, I'm not a replacement for one. Don't put that on me."

"It's not about that. We've been trying to go it alone and it hasn't worked. I don't want to anymore."

Bucky's breath is bated. "You may not be afraid of this." He swallows; looks to the ceiling. "But I am."

It's Steve's breath that's caught, all of a sudden. His fingers pause before cupping whole at Bucky's neck. "You have been before," he says, low.

"I was stronger then."

"You're strong enough now."

A gentle shake of his head. He swallows, hard, his jaw clenching. "I don't know that I am."

"Of all you've survived," Steve mutters, "this can't be the thing that tips the load."

" _You_ tip the load."

Steve's thumb finds the tear that forms in the corner of his eye and brushes it aside. "Why?"

Bucky's eyes fly open, resolve forming stubborn at his mouth. "Because of shit like _that_ , Rogers, Jesus," he says, and knocks Steve's hand gently aside.

Steve smiles. He can't help it. "Sorry."

"Christ -- you _are_ sorry, _why_?"

"For--" He shrugs; emotion wells in his chest, now. "For not staying home."

Bucky's fist in his shirt again, as caring as it is ferocious. "Don't be a fat-head."

It's been so long since Steve's heard him say that. He smiles his surprise, but it's at once the sad thing. "Stay with me, Bucky." He holds his hands to Bucky's face, steadying. "We can stay a while."

A heavy swallow; a circumspect look. "A couple of hours." Bucky pulls Steve in. "But then we've gotta go."

  


  


  


Ever since Bucky had left for basic, something had shifted between them. Steve had always thought of it as the fault of _the uniform_. The uniform lay itself between Bucky and Steve, preventing them from returning to the life they'd built before the conscription notice had taken it from them. It was the fact that Bucky got a notice at all, that he filled out a uniform so well, just as much as it was that Steve never would.

Even when Bucky came home, the war loomed in the corner of every room.

They did their best. Steve genuinely feels they'd done their best to remember their life together. But Steve had been caught between jealous and terrified, and Bucky… well. Bucky never told Steve how he felt.

Steve could make guesses. He could guess that Bucky was scared. Ever since _the uniform_ , Bucky's eyes had taken to dragging, catching over everything with each homecoming. Steve wondered if he'd thought it was the last time he'd be seeing it -- the apartment. The drape of his sisters' hair. The knit on a blanket his mother had given them. 

Steve.

It was reasonable to think Bucky was afraid of dying. He'd given that much away the day the conscription notice had come. But if Steve looked closely enough, he thought he could see fear of something else in the clench of Bucky's jaw, too.

Steve hated to see the uniform on him. Some part of his mind registered that he wanted to grab hold of those pauldrons and ride Bucky within an inch of his life, but then he wanted to take it off him and never have him put it on again. It looked _wrong_ on him, like an overlapping paradox. He knew Bucky didn't believe in grand notions like justice. Yet he was the one caught fighting, and Steve's flaws meant he couldn't replace him. Steve's flaws meant that Bucky was the one caught in this Class A monstrosity. Steve's flaws meant Bucky had to go in his place.

Yet Bucky wore _the uniform_ constantly, even though he was on leave. Steve's not sure he ever saw Bucky in any other set of clothes after he'd first shipped off. It had been as though Bucky was trying to force himself to adjust, to immerse himself wholly into the world where was a private, a corporal, a sergeant. It was as though he wanted people to respond to him as though he was a soldier, in case it made it realer that he was.

Bucky still swung by the apartment they used to share every day of his leave for an hour or two; but he never slept over. That left Steve reeling. He'd known things would change when Bucky left, but he sure hadn't thought they'd get this bad. Not that they'd stopped everything; Bucky still swaggered in the room with an air of seduction, still held onto Steve as steadfast as ever. But once they'd made out and stripped and fucked and collapsed, Bucky would withdraw almost immediately, saying he had somewhere else to be. 

He seemed to have almost no time for Steve anymore. He had to visit family, he had to meet up with the guys. He met up with a lot of girls, too, but Bucky always _had_ been concerned with appearances. It made sense that would amplify now that he was in the army, especially after that first promotion. It made sense that he had places to be, had to be seen places; that he had people to see, had to be seen seeing others.

Steve had caught him sitting on the bed, once, staring at the uniform where he'd draped it over a nearby chair. The light had been dim and Bucky'd been naked; his legs had bent wide, elbows set against his thighs. 

He'd _stared_ at that thing as though he'd had no idea what it was.

Bucky's energy had changed since he left. His whole form had changed so much. He'd become so lithe, the lines of him so pronounced. Steve thought he was more muscular but he couldn't be sure. There was so much definition he had never had the chance to draw. 

Steve had wanted to step closer, but as soon as he'd moved Bucky'd stood as if struck.

"Hey," Steve had said, his hand tensed high on the doorframe. "Sorry. Didn't mean to interrupt."

"Not interrupting." Bucky'd flashed him a pathetic half-smile and started to dress.

Steve's heart had pounded. Something about this was all wrong. "Buck."

"Yeah."

Desperation in his lungs. " _Bucky._ "

A flicker of annoyance as he'd finally looked at him. "What?"

"Don't go out tonight." Steve swallowed. "Stay here."

Bucky's pants had already been donned, one arm stretched toward his shirt. His dogtags hung around his neck. Bucky never took those off anymore.

"Why?" Bucky asked, dead in his tracks. He must have sensed something in the room, because his voice had gone quiet.

If Steve had to pinpoint a moment where his heart became broken, that might've been it.

"Because we're not done here."

A smirk, something _awful_. "We're not?" said Bucky, hollow.

"No. You don't get to just quit this because you got drafted."

A flex of his jaw. "I knew you wanted to fight a war, Steve, but I didn't realize you wanted to _fight a war._ "

"Take me seriously."

"I am taking you seriously. Too serious, one might say."

"Oh yeah? How's that?"

"I keep coming here. Though I don't know why."

Steve blinked. "You _don't_?"

"I'm just leading you on." A crooked smile, arrogant and wrong. "You're being fucked by a dead man, you oughtta know that by now."

Steve turned his face away as though it'd been slapped. "Jesus, Buck. You've gotta have a _little_ faith."

"In those bastards? Those chickens and bigots? Not on your life, Rogers. Not even on mine."

"Stop it. I'm talking about you. They said you had a knack for it, didn't they?"

"What, for firing a gun? Sure. Walk in the park when no one's shooting back."

"Bucky."

"What, Steve?" Finally a flash of anger -- something honest, something Steve knew how to respond to. "What do you want me to say? That this is okay, what we're doing here? That I should _sleep over_ , way I used to?"

"You didn't _sleep over_ , Bucky, you _lived here!_ " Steve breathed at him heavily; Bucky blinked into silence. "You _lived in this,_ this was your _life_. We lived this _together_. You can't let this damn war take away everything we had." 

"Oh, come _on_! After all this time, are you still that naive? That's what war _does,_ Steve! Taking lives is its only mandate, why would it spare ours?"

 _Ours._ Steve had blinked against it, a smile lighting irrationally in the corner of his mouth. "Well, not with that attitude," he'd said, too quiet.

Bucky's incredulity lit magnificent on his face. "Of all the times not to take something seriously!"

"Bucky." He took a step forward. "Listen."

"No, Steve, you listen to me."

"I want to ask you something. You can go after that if you really want."

Bucky was really angry with him, but this still ratcheted his shoulders down to neutral. He stared at him, silent, waiting.

"Do you love me?"

Bucky's eyebrows steepled high on his head. He wrenched himself away in the next seconds, a violent gesture; he stared motionless at the wall with hands on his hips.

"Do you," Steve repeated, forcing his voice steady through the beat of his heart, "love me."

"Do I love you," Bucky repeated, shaking his head.

"A year ago, you held me on that table--"

"Oh, Jesus, Steve."

"--and you said we _had something_."

"That was a mistake."

"It was? What do you call the last four years? How does a person get something so wrong for so long?"

Bucky grabbed at the nearest piece of clothing just to throw it furiously onto the bed as he spun fast around. "God fucking help me, I love you, all right?" He stared at Steve, eyes blazing; his chest was heaving. "You're all I fucking think about. Is that what you want to hear? We don't write for weeks at a time, and every single day I still spend hours thinking of you. I mean that. Every day. You still mean the world to me, Steve. I don't goddamn know how you did this to me. I have no idea how you fuck me up like this. I've been trying not to let you but every time I'm at home, you're still here, being the way you are, and I still feel that _stupid_ tick in my chest that reminds me why I'm still doing this."

Bucky was on a roll, fuelled by some sense of injustice, and Steve only watched as he gestured wildly between the two of them. "So I think: one time. I'll indulge one time and it's out of my system. But it never is." He'd laughed hollowly. "In my head, in my idle moments, I'm here, Steve. I'm here in this goddamn apartment, with you, maybe forever. Which fucking sucks, I gotta tell you--" and Bucky's voice had contracted, his teeth clenching with the swell of emotion. "Because I'm a corporal up for sergeant in the United States Army, and we're a day away from declaring war, which means that I don't get to have this. I don't get to do this with you anymore. If they ever found out--"

Bucky's sentence had died in his throat. He'd swallowed to the floor, then balled his fists at his hips, blinking up and off into the corner of the room.

Steve waited until Bucky'd angrily wiped at eyes with the backs of his hand before saying anything.

"What then, Bucky?" Steve said, so quiet. "What happens if they find out?"

"Blue discharge at best," Bucky'd told the floor. "I'd never find work again."

This struck Steve as inappropriately funny. "Well, that'd make two of us."

"Don't try that. You know better. I have a duty, remember?" A joyless smile, thin and boardlike. "Someone's gotta show up to command the troops. For _justice,_ and all that."

They stood a room apart, staring across in the dim light.

"Will you please stay," Steve asked. "Just for a while."

Bucky sighed to the ceiling. "Did you just hear a goddamn word I said."

"Yeah. Every one. Including that this is where you want to be." Bucky's hand clenched white around the back of the nearest chair. Steve dared not approach him; ruin threatened at the edges of his calm. "One night, Buck, please. Then you can go back to -- doing whatever it is you need to do. Just... look, I get that you have to... socialize, and date and all that, but I'm not gonna let this die without a fight. I don't care what you or some dumb war says."

"Steve."

"You can take a break for one night. One more night. You're gonna be deployed soon, so this is our chance. We should take it."

Bucky sniffed and avoided his gaze, but the second after that, he nodded.

"Thank you," Steve said, relief full in him. "Now take those the hell off."

Bucky looked down at his pants. "Why?"

 _Because I hate that thing on you._ "Because I want you to."

Bucky'd thought about this, but he undressed a moment later and crawled at once back into bed.

Steve crawled into bed beside him; intertwined their fingers, and lay motionless with him, just -- being.

"I don't want to do all this," Bucky'd told him, when a few minutes had passed in companionate silence. "You know that, right? I hate every second."

"I know, Bucky."

"I wish I could just come back."

"I know."

Bucky'd looked over at him, face full with regret. "Why aren't you -- angrier?"

Steve didn't have the heart to tell him that it's hard to feel angry when you're so brokenhearted. "I dunno," he'd said, before his eyes grew hot. He rolled toward Bucky and set his face into the crook of his neck, just to feel Bucky's fingers work into his hair. "I'm just not."

"I think I'm getting how you used to feel," said Bucky. He pulled Steve in so tight, so insistent. "Now I'm the one angry all the time."

Steve hadn't known what to say to that, so he hadn't said a thing.

  


  


  


  
**B A R G A I N I N G**  
_ june 2016 _  


  


They have another hour, Bucky says. And then they have to move. 

"How do I reach you?" Steve asks, with his lips at Bucky's temple. They have long since collapsed into bed, having fucked one another into surrender, and now Bucky's pressed against him, knuckles fond at Steve's back. "You could always just -- come with me. See the situation for yourself."

Steve knows what the latter option implies: that if he comes with him to Wakanda, he's risking walking into a trap. 

He feels Bucky stiffen, but then -- "You want me to."

"What I want doesn't matter."

"It matters. You want me there or not?"

Steve hesitates. "I mean… yeah, Buck. I want you there."

Bucky nods, slow, avoiding eye contact. "Then I guess I'll come with you."

Steve honestly hadn't expected that. "Are you sure?"

"Don't condescend to me."

"I'm not meaning to."

Bucky raps his knuckles against Steve's shoulder. "I figure you've gotten me this far." 

It's the closest thing to a trusting phrase Steve's heard from him so far, even if it is delivered through gritted teeth.

"There are some things you should know," Bucky adds, after a pause. "Before you start looking for a way to get this shit out of me."

Something in his tone evokes a familiar thrum of dread. Steve's thumb traces over the stubble at Bucky's jaw. "All right."

He clenches his teeth; looks away. "Take my journals," he says eventually, hurried on an exhale. "From my knapsack. They'll be useful. There's intel; not much. It's, uh... you'll have to dig." He sighs angrily, as though words elude him. "There's a lot there that's not relevant."

"Okay," Steve says, trying to coax calm against his skin.

"You're not gonna like it. I... didn't write in different places when I was trying to sort myself out."

Bucky's fingertips have dug involuntarily into Steve's skin. Steve pulls him in, aiming to steady. "I'll be fine."

"There's -- information -- you won't--"

"I've read your file, Bucky." Steve's lips rest at Bucky's brow. "From Hydra."

A long, thrumming pause. "How?" he rasps, eventually.

"Natasha tracked it down in the wake of S.H.I.E.L.D. collapsing. Guess the firewalls were down, or something."

"She's read it too, then."

"Seems likely."

"And you're still here?"

"Yeah. I'm still here."

Bucky's anxiety is viscerally physical. Steve aims to guide him through it with gentle hands and bided time.

"You know -- who I've killed."

"Yeah."

"You know how many."

Steve nods, his own heart rate picking up. Bucky tries to push himself out of Steve's grasp, but it's hard with one arm; Steve holds gentle at his wrist.

Bucky blinks at him, furious. " _Why_ are you _helping me_?"

"Why did you step in on that playground?"

It's a reach, Steve knows. Bucky's whole face flashes incredulity. "We're not who we were when we were six!"

"No. You've been through a lot of awful things since then. Things someone else put you through. Things you wouldn't wish on anyone, given the choice."

"Is that what you think?"

"That's what I think."

"And what about the fact that I want every single one of those assholes dead who did this to me?"

"Let's go. You want backup?"

Bucky stares at him, as though trying to compute this. Steve stares at him in seriousness, with the fullness of his being.

"What did it say?" Bucky gravels, eventually.

"The file?" He shrugs, trying desperately for casual. "Nothing in-depth. Notes on training, integration. Early arm schematics and functions." He gestures at Bucky's amputated prosthetic. "Notes on -- uh -- Zola's early… when you were in the POW cell during the war. I guess they finally found a strain of my serum that worked. You, uh… you were a superhero during the war, too, you know that?" Steve gives a fragile smile, but avoids Bucky's eye. "List of deployments up until 2011, their status of completion. Not much else."

This does not satisfy Bucky. He stares hard, apprehensive. "What else."

"What did you have in mind?"

"Gee, Steve, I dunno, how about proficiencies?"

Nerves wrack through him, as he's sure Bucky intended. "Sure, some of those. Registered your army training, sniper creds, some testing and statistics. You're also--"

"Yeah," Bucky says, angry, when Steve falters. "That."

"You, uh, learn languages quick. Still good at math."

"I'm _suggestible_ , you mean."

Steve shuts his eyes, but sees no way out. Not if he wants to build Bucky's trust. "They -- met less resistance, trying to integrate information into your head. Yeah."

Bucky snaps his arm out of Steve's gentle grip and rolls out of bed. It's the most agile movement Steve's seen from him in days. "If you know that, you must know _why._ "

"I -- understand the tools they used, in a general sense."

"Stop beating around the fucking bush." Bucky's staring at him, mouth pressed thin -- furious. Terrified. "They made me hate you."

"Bucky."

"They made me into _this_ by using you against me."

_Bond with Rogers appears uncharacteristically strong. Advanced weaponization of subject, if possible, best explored by exploiting--_

"You," Bucky's saying, voice wavering, "are the reason I was so _successful_ as an assassin."

_Hydra had built the Winter Soldier in Steve's image._  
_If Steve had just--_

"Bucky," Steve says again. It's soft in his throat. He just wants Bucky to come back. "Hydra is the reason for all of it. They used you. It's not about--"

"I was weak." His hand is out to one side, bracing him. He looks visibly, impossibly pale. "I loved you and they found out and they used you to make me."

"You could not have done anything--"

"I should have left you behind, Steve, years ago."

It hurts, unexpectedly. "Don't say that." 

"I should never have started this."

"What -- our relationship?" Some dry laugh escapes him; he regrets the sound from the start. "And have never loved anyone? Bucky. Forgive yourself."

It's a simple request, and yet Bucky looks so affronted. " _No._ "

"What have you done wrong?"

"Steve, _god_! I've murdered dozens of innocent people! What's it gonna take for you to clue in?"

"And during the war?"

"Yeah, then too!"

"But would you have, given the choice?"

"I had a choice!"

"I don't think you did. Answer me honestly. Would you," Steve says again, speaking slowly for his own sake more than Bucky's, "have gone to war at all, given the choice not to."

Furiously, with shaking breaths, Bucky doesn't answer.

"And would you have done anything you did as the Winter Soldier, freely? Or were you forced to do it?"

Bucky's silence stretches on. Steve knows the answer, anyway.

"So you were coerced into a war you never believed in," Steve says. "You learned the skills you had to in order to survive it. You never once said it was anything but survival, Bucky. You climbed the ranks out of survival. You learned your specialization out of survival."

"Steve."

"You were taken POW, against your will, in a war you were in against your will, and you were given a serum against your will, and then you were _made_ to become an assassin. You had _physical alterations_ done to you, Bucky. They attacked you. They mutilated you. They brainwashed you. That's on _them_. I don't think for a _second_ the fact that you loved me factors into all that."

"Steve, the way they broke me down--"

"Did you have any free agency when you were making those twenty-two kills?"

Bucky looks petrified. Steve wants to pull him in and hold. "I don't know," he gravels eventually, mouth pinched small.

"I think you do. What would you do now, if you were in a situation where you were being made to kill like that against your will?"

More silence. Bucky breathes heavily at him.

"You did all of that because you were forced to," Steve concludes.

"I did all of that," Bucky bites back. "Period."

"You wanna know my body count, Buck?"

Something shifts in his face.

"You entered the war against your will," Steve continues, "but I wanted to go. You were given a serum that made you a better killer, but I did that on purpose. I don't use a gun, but brute force does plenty. I've been working with the Avengers for five years, and my death count is -- high, Bucky. It's high." Steve swallows, bile rising -- the first chip in the stone of his calm. "You keep degrading your humanity to me, but you were forced into this. You were taken advantage of and abused and indoctrinated. None of it falls on your shoulders. You didn't ask for any of it." He gives a shaky smile, involuntarily; a longtime measure of defense. He wishes for the first time he'd never learned it. "But I -- asked for all of it. I went looking for it. In more ways than one, I _caused_ all of this. So which one of us sounds like a monster to you?"

Silence pulses audibly, painfully around them. Steve waits, for a while. Bucky just stares, breathing with harried lungs.

"Do you still want me to help you?" Steve asks eventually, then clears his throat around the lump that's formed in it.

"Yes," Bucky says, immediate and quiet.

Steve looks up at him and purses his lips. He's trying to show gratitude, but he's not sure why or how.

"I don't think you're a monster," Bucky adds, after a while.

"I don't think you're a monster, either."

"That doesn't mean I deserve -- this."

Steve shakes his head, feeling misplaced incredulity. "You do," he says, with abiding sincerity.

They stare at each other across the room. Bucky looks so, so tired.

"Will you come back to bed?" Steve asks.

Bucky looks at him a moment too long, something unidentifiable steepling at his brow. "I don't want you to--" His gaze cuts away. "I don't want this to sour."

Steve blinks. "What do you mean?"

"They used you against me to make -- the assassin."

"Yeah."

"Well, don't -- feel bad."

Steve stares; then, slowly, a half-smile takes hold of him. "That the best you can do?" he asks dryly.

"I'm a little pressed," Bucky says tiredly.

"I'm not gonna feel bad. Let's get some sleep."

"We have to go."

"No we don't."

"You're gonna feel bad."

"Then I'll feel bad. I already feel bad."

"Steve."

"Sleep now. We'll go tomorrow."

"I'm not sorry I loved you."

Steve's smile turns sad in slow, dragging beats. "It's allowed to be complicated, Bucky," he says, smoothing out the words as they leave his throat jagged. "I don't think -- we were ever meant to be simple."

He doesn't know what about it struck true, but after another second Bucky moves forward and steps shakily into bed.

Steve takes him in without hesitating a second.

  


  


  


  
**A C C E P T A N C E**  
_(capitulation. defeat.)_  
_ june 2016 _  


  


When he moves into the room, hands clenched into fists and shoved in his pockets, every word he'd thought to say has somehow left him. 

The door clicks shut behind him. Bucky holds his eye. Silence spans long, then longer still.

It had all gone suspiciously well, until this moment. Steve had gotten hold of T'Challa's people and negotiated a meeting spot, closer to them but far enough away. Though he hadn't expected it, T'Challa himself had met them, bodyguards keeping a distance, himself unarmed.

"Your Highness," Steve said, and stepped forward to shake his hand.

"Captain," T'Challa replied. "You received my message."

"We did. We needed a couple of days to discuss our course of action. Thank you for your offer to help."

"After the way I treated you and your friend, it is the least I could do." T'Challa had looked at Bucky, measured, unaccusing. Bucky'd hung back, suspicion as high as his guard. He hadn't moved at all as T'Challa had appraised him. "I am truly sorry," T'Challa said to him, even from a distance. "There is no excuse. An apology is insufficient, but please know I mean to make it up to you in whatever respect I can."

Bucky had stared at him with a furrow of his brow; but then, mere seconds later, he had taken the hand T'Challa had extended to him. "I'm sorry," Bucky'd said at once, blowing Steve utterly away. He'd swallowed hard, as though struggling to keep himself steady. "About your father."

T'Challa had given a grim smile. "We must now concern ourselves with the living," he'd said; and they'd nodded to each other, as though knowing they were on the same page.

The plane ride to Wakanda had been tense, but they had still been quick to solidify plans. T'Challa listened carefully to what they had to say in full before surprising them again with an offer of his own cryosleep pod.

"Why do you have it?" Bucky had asked him, suspicion blushing full in him; and T'Challa had admitted he'd reverse-engineered it from a Hydra lab he and his father had taken out decades ago, just for the sake of keeping up to date on their tech.

"It has never been used," T'Challa said delicately.

"That's not a problem," said Bucky at once.

"I have made improvements, but I cannot guarantee--"

"I don't need a guarantee. I need a chance. Can you offer that?"

T'Challa had stared at him appraisingly, but ultimately nodded.

Until this moment -- until they got _here_ , to T'Challa's base, sprawling through an endlessly fertile forest -- Steve had been grateful. Everything Bucky had shown him was a gift, because Steve recognized all of it as fight. The apartments were fighting. The fear was fighting. The _fighting_ was fighting. 

But _this_?

It's been only a day here and yet the change in Bucky has been total. Having been assured to the fullest extent possible that he will not be used for experimentation, Bucky seems willing to give himself over to everything short of it. This gentle expression, this steepled brow, is so familiar to Steve, and yet never has it struck him as horrifying before. Bucky's given him looks like this in the midst of sudden silences since 1936, since the night Steve found him on the fire escape. 

Steve used to revel in it, to know that silence was meant for only him; to know Bucky was helpless but to feel it, to feel whatever this was, and that Steve caused it. Now it is a blade, ripping steeply into his chest. 

Is this what acceptance looks like? Is this what Steve's supposed to have been fighting for? He wants Bucky to _fight back_. He has always just wanted--

"There's something I want you to know," Bucky tells him, sudden and soft.

Steve blinks back up at him, out of his head. Two full minutes must have passed by now, but Bucky's still sitting on the counter where Steve found him. His prosthetic's been largely disassembled, the joint of his shoulder covered neatly over with a sock. They haven't slept since Kiev. The room feels too bright.

Steve opens his mouth to respond, but finds he has to shut it again to stop from making sounds he might regret.

Bucky's face pinches tighter -- a crack in the canvas.

"Do you know the day I fell in love with you?" he asks, when Steve doesn't talk.

Steve's stomach drops. He clenches his teeth; presses crescents into his palms. "No."

"You woke up and saw me on the fire escape." Bucky smiles grimly, with a tick in his jaw. "I'd been a wreck for weeks. I was going through carton after carton of cigarettes, and every time I put one in my mouth I heard your stupid voice in my head. _Don't light that, fat-head, I mean it._ "

Steve wishes so desperately he was angry. He wishes he felt anything but this.

"And I did it anyway." That smile, conveying the ruins of hope. "I smoked every cigarette in defiance of you and that was really stupid, because every time I'd put one in my mouth in the first place I was trying to forget you. And I couldn't. I could never forget you, Steve."

Breath fills his chest against his will. " _Bucky._ "

"I was so obsessed with you and I couldn't figure out why. I would have happily given you everything I'd owned and never thought it was enough. I'd have given you the shirt off my back if you'd have let me. I'd never felt like that before."

"Bucky -- were you lying? When you said this was a temporary measure?"

"And so I started taking these long walks," Bucky's saying, raising his voice, talking over him, "middle of the night, when I couldn't sleep -- which was always. Every night. Walking through Brooklyn smoking and thinking. And time and time again I wound up looking at your window. I couldn't figure it out for the life of me. I'd say, 'I'll just go to the pharmacy and back,' and then I'd do that, only then I'd keep on going and I'd wind up looking up at your goddamn bedroom window. Trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with me."

Steve wants to get them _out_ of here. He wants to reach out and pull him away from this bright and sterile place, to bring him back from this _abandon_ \--

"I climbed up that goddamn fire escape trying to prove to myself I didn't love you, but all it did was confirm it when I saw you. Sleeping there." That distant smile. Steve wants to slap it off him. "Seventeen years old and I thought my life was over."

"Bucky, _please._ "

"Got real lucky with you, Rogers. That's not beyond me. Never was."

"It's not luck that got us here. It's _fight._ "

"Steve, listen to me, for _fuck's sake._ "

That note -- something other than _capitulation_ \-- brings Steve to a furious halt. He stares. Bucky blinks back. His chin quakes, the way it does when anxiety is wracking him beyond control.

"I have loved you every day since then," he says, voice shaking. "I loved you the whole war. I don't want you to live the rest of your life not knowing."

Steve forces himself to take another breath; but then something breaks. He's across the room in two strides, his hands are flush against Bucky's face, their foreheads fall together; Bucky's gripping at his wrist. "Why didn't you _tell me_?" Steve whispers.

"You got big. You didn't need me anymore."

"I needed you. I needed you so bad I--"

"You found someone, you found Peggy--"

"I came for _you_."

"Then you found me. What more was there to say? I wasn't about to force you back into something--"

"You wouldn't have _forced_ anything."

"We could never have done what we did in Brooklyn."

"It wasn't meant to be duplicated. I wanted to stand with you on the front, and as stupid as that was--"

"You did. We did."

"But it wasn't enough."

"It was all we could do."

"I don't believe that."

"Believe me, Rogers."

"Bucky," he says, note falling hard in his throat. "You should have _said something._ "

Bucky's palm braces against Steve's neck. "Yeah, well," he gravels, "you too"; and if the sound in his throat was going to be another word Steve doesn't know because he's swallowed it down, mouth whole and heavy, one hand grasping at Bucky's hip and moving it flush across the counter Bucky's seated on. Bucky opens for him so wonderfully, allows himself to be held, and if Steve can convince him to stay, just for another _minute,_ maybe--

Behind them, the door clicks open. 

They burst apart; Steve wrenches himself away. He has to put a tremoring hand to shield his face from the newcomer until he successfully blinks his eyes clear again. When he finally turns he sees T'Challa, looking apologetic. 

Bucky's staring at the floor, his hand braced white around the side of the counter. "Is this urgent?" Steve says, with frayed control.

"The pod has been prepared. I need to check Barnes' vitals before we begin."

"I understand. Can you do it in a minute?"

"Steve." Bucky looks up at him, disengaging his fingers one by one from the edge of the surface. "It's fine."

Steve stares at him for several long seconds as he extends his arm hesitantly forward and nods to T'Challa. T'Challa, either making himself immune to the tension in the room or simply not bothered by it, goes about fastening the cuff around Bucky's bicep without wasting another second looking embarrassed.

Bucky casts his gaze down, then meets Steve's eye, as though challenging him to stay quiet.

No chance.

"Do you not think I'm going to succeed?" Steve asks, forced steady, half a room away.

"I think there are no guarantees," Bucky replies.

"So you're really going to go in there thinking you might never come out again."

"I think I've already been given too many chances."

"I don't agree."

"I know you don't." A hint of a smile. Bucky's eyes flit to his. "I think you have the best shot at getting me out. That doesn't make it a good one."

"So I don't find a cure, I'm just supposed to leave you there?"

"Yup."

Fury, crashing. " _No_."

"What, the risk magically becomes more palatable later?"

"We get Hydra off your trail, we figure out a way to keep it that way? Yeah!"

"Someone out there still has the magic words. I'm a sleeper agent for life. Who would you condemn in my place?” Bucky's jaw is steeled, absent of compromise. "I don’t want my legacy on this world to be the one where I was used as a weapon, where I killed people against my will. I can’t do that, I can’t be that. I -- was _here_." A break in it, like a crack in the very foundation of him. "I lived. For a while. I'm trying to explain to you that it was enough."

"Not for me," Steve bites back immediately.

"You've survived this long without me," Bucky tells him, just as fast. "You're practiced at it by now."

"I don't _want_ \--"

"I don't _want this either_ ," Bucky cuts in, louder.

A long, thrumming pause. T'Challa lets it break before he looks up at Bucky.

"Your heart rate needs to go down," he tells him, gently.

Bucky's eyes flit to Steve, as though in tacit victory. "Stop fighting this," he gravels; but then he rolls his eyes at himself, an involuntary gesture, some annoyed smile tugging at his face again. "What am I saying? You managed to drive a plane into the goddamn Arctic and you still weren't done fighting. Jesus, Steve, what'll it take?"

_Losing you again._

"Let's never find out," is what he says.

T'Challa folds his supplies calmly up in his hands before Steve can break Bucky's eye. "Everything appears to be in order," T'Challa tells Bucky, pretending once again that he has interrupted nothing. "Do you recall what sort of sedative they applied to you in previous sessions?"

As Steve watches, the anxiety of the memory rises visibly in Bucky's form. It starts with mere tension, a flex of his jaw; but then his eyes flit around the room, his throat working visibly. 

"They -- didn't," he says.

Understanding settles over T'Challa face as horror dawns on Steve's. "I see. Would you like to approach things differently now?"

"Yes," Bucky says, unhesitating. "Whatever you have is fine, but I'll need more of it."

Steve steps forward. "Bucky."

"It's the best way to keep things quiet while I go under," says Bucky. "I tend to -- panic. In tight spaces. These days."

Steve hadn't known his heart could sink any further, but it can. It does.

T'Challa merely nods at him, as though this was all to be expected. "Keep your heart rate down," he reminds him; then, after Bucky returns T'Challa's nod, T'Challa glances at Steve and leaves the room.

The door clicks shut behind him.

Steve stares at a spot between them on the floor and tries to right his breathing. "I'm sorry," he mutters after a while, shoving his hands in his pockets again.

"I get it. I just don't want to waste more time fighting."

"It never feels like a waste when the words are coming out of my mouth."

"Everything is a righteous crusade to you."

"That is blatantly false."

A huff of frustration escapes him. "Can you just accept that this -- that being _this_ way -- is something I have to deal with in real time? Regardless of your wishes, of what _you want_ for me -- that doesn't make this less real."

 _Is it permanent?_ he'd asked.  
_So far,_ Steve had told him.

Acceptance is a horrid beast that puts out any fire he's gotten back.

Steve lets his head hang, his shoulders sloping with defeat. When he looks up at him again, it is with his last shred of resolve. 

"I love you, Bucky," he manages, the product of a will fast eroding. "I always have."

Bucky smiles, shaking, fragile. "C'mere, Rogers." 

Steve waits a second before stepping forward, forcing his head to raise just long enough for Bucky to hook his elbow around it. Steve's hands find Bucky's ribs and hold against them, Bucky's lips against his forehead.

"Don't do anything stupid," he mutters against the fringe of Steve's hair.

"How can I," he begins; but then stops when his traitorous throat closes in on him.

If he accepts that Bucky's going in, he can't quite accept he'll never come out again. His hand clenches in Bucky's shirt. He swallows his desperation. 

"I'm gonna come back for you," Steve tells him.

Bucky swallows and nods, and doesn't say a word.

  



	4. Chapter 4

  


  
**B A R G A I N I N G**  
_(with others as much as himself)_  
_june 2016_   


  


When Steve steps into the light, Sam looks at him like he's the best thing he's ever seen. "I knew you'd show up," he says; but the very fact that he has to say it at all tells Steve he must've doubted it. 

Steve gives him a sly smile and steps to the side to catch Wanda's eye. "Listen, we don't have a lot of time," he tells her. "Nat's running interference, but she can only do so much without backup. Gonna get Sam to help you out of there."

"What do you mean, without backup?" Sam says beside him.

"Just muscle," Steve says, straightening to look at him. "T'Challa couldn't spare intelligence personnel. I understand why."

"T'Challa? King Cat T'Challa? Where's Barnes?"

"At some point in the next 30 seconds," Steve continues, as though he hadn't said a thing, "those doors are gonna click open. I'm not gonna have access to that corridor right away, so you're gonna have to help Wanda out of whatever that thing is and get her into the hallway while I figure out how to loop around and help you fight out. Hey, Barton," he says, and reaches over to tap on the glass of his cell. "You're not seriously asleep right now, are you?"

"No," comes Clint's graveled voice, muffled, back turned to him. "I'm just not feeling very happy with you right now, Cap."

"That's not me anymore," he says without thinking.

Clint turns slowly over to look at Steve, accusation in his eyes. "What does that mean?"

"We don't have time," Steve mutters, annoyed with himself. "Scott, you good to go here?"

"Hell yeah," Scott says, somewhere behind him.

"Everyone back from the doors?"

"How we coming along?" pants Natasha in his ear.

"Ready when you are," Steve mutters into his earpiece; and he nods at Sam before moving to sprint away, hoping beyond a prayer that he's gonna be able to get to the back door before reinforcements show up.

As he goes, Sam sets his eyes narrow, almost as though he doesn't trust him to show up in time.

Even after Steve does, the expression doesn't waver the whole helicopter ride out.

  


  


  


Ever since Bucky went back under, Steve can't stop thinking:

_Don't enlist._

It's 2016 and he's already strong. He's fought in the war and learned what it is. He got his uniform; he's carried his shield. He's pretended to be what he set out to become.

Bucky told him not to enlist, seventy-five years ago. He'd said, _This isn't what you want._ What Steve had heard was, _It isn't what I want for you,_ but now he knows what Bucky meant.

Bucky's uniform had stood between them then, but he's realizing only now that Steve's had, too. 

_Don't enlist,_ Bucky had said. _This isn't what you--_

Steve had done it anyway -- become this, caused _this_ ; allowed himself to become the paradigm of the very war that had torn Bucky to shreds.

_Don't enlist, Steve. I mean it. This isn't--_

"If you would like, Captain," T'Challa had said before Steve had left for the Raft, "I may be able to build for you another suit. Recreate the shield you left with Stark. There is a small store of vibranium here in the palace, and if you would be willing to wait a day I am sure our scientists--"

"No," Steve had interjected, suddenly certain that it was the last thing he wanted. "There's nothing…" He'd stopped and straightened, and tried to find the words. "That's not who I am anymore."

To Steve's surprise, he'd looked up to see T'Challa smiling. "I understand," he said, gently, delivered in just such a way to convince Steve he really did.

"And please," Steve said, feeling suddenly nervous. "It's Steve Rogers."

Turning away from him, it was Steve Rogers who took a step forward -- then another; then a third. And as he had, tension had sloughed off him in unexpected release.

 _There's no just crusade to be found here,_ Bucky'd told him, seventy-five years ago. _Trust me._

Seventy-five years too late, Steve is finally ready to listen.

  


  


  


"I don't think you fully get what the cost actually was to keep your asses out of jail."

Steve blinks up, weary. It's been three days without sleep, three days without Bucky; it's been tracking down Natasha, breaking into the Raft, getting them out and finding safehouses for those who wanted them. And now it's the three of them -- Sam, Natasha, and Steve -- back in Wakanda, ostensibly trying to rest. 

In reality, Steve is spending his hours trying to sketch out some kind of itinerary. It's necessary. He's sure it is. He just wants to stop feeling so much like he's chasing ghosts.

Steve sighs at Sam in front of him. "I'm trying to understand."

"Well, at least that's honest."

"I'm sorry for what happened. Really, I am."

"I don't doubt it, but sorry doesn't present a different outcome next time."

"I appreciate what you did for me."

Sam blinks, as though incredulous. "See, that's kinda what I'm talking about. It's not what anyone _did_ as much as it is what happened after it. I don't like enclosed spaces, Cap--"

"That's not me anymore," he murmurs, rubbing his face in his hands.

" _Okay_ , we're gonna come back to that, but we're not talking about you right now. I don't fucking like prison and I sure as shit don't like being manhandled by law enforcement either. Much prefer it in the open air, you know what I'm saying?"

"I… do."

"And yet the second I gave an inch so the two of you could go have your little rendezvous--"

"Sam, give it a rest."

"--it takes you a _week_ to get me out again?"

"The situation became volatile. Stark met us in Siberia--"

"I know he did. I sent him there, to help you."

Steve's gaze sharpens. "Yeah, well, did you also know the Winter Soldier was the one sent to assassinate Stark's parents in 1991?" He is tired, he is beyond exhausted, and he hadn't thought before he'd said it, but it has the desired effect; Sam's face relaxes. "Your little hail mary didn't exactly end well."

"Stark figured that out right then?"

"Zemo told him."

Incredulity lights back on Sam's face. "Well how the hell was I supposed to know that was gonna happen?"

It's tempting to stay petty, but Steve's too tired of fighting to put the effort in. "It's -- not your fault. I'm not trying to... look, the short version is that Tony flew into a rage and decided Bucky was better off dead. Given that he still had his suit on, you can imagine how that went. Bucky lost an arm, I had some pretty severe injuries--"

"He lost an arm? _Again?_ "

"--and the serum can only do so much, so we needed time to recover. That accounts for a couple days, plus finding T'Challa, waiting for Natasha, getting the jailbreak coordinated..."

Sam's shaking his head. "I'm not unsympathetic, but that should've taken maybe four days, way you heal. Natasha was on this shit from day one, and you just kind of showed up a week after the fact and piggybacked on her plan? That still tells me you decided to spend some quality time with your lover before deigning to _break me out of jail_ , and that kinda says a lot by itself, don't you think?"

"You know, every time you talk about Bucky--"

" _Jesus_ , Steve, widen your focus for a goddamn _second._ " Sam stares. Steve feels the blood pumping through him, driving hard. "This isn't about Barnes, man. This is about _you._ I think I'm just starting to figure out for the first time that I've spent a whole lot of time naive as to your priorities. I thought that when I signed up to bring down S.H.I.E.L.D. with you that maybe that looked something like solidarity to you. But now maybe I'm thinking I was an idiot to believe that you'd do anything other than turn your back on me in a pinch just so you could get laid."

"That's not--"

"Let me goddamn finish!"

Steve shuts his mouth and clenches his jaw. The gesture seems to soften Sam somewhat, as though reminding him that they're on the same side. "Look," he says, pinching at his eyes. "I joined your mission because you're about people's fundamental right to freedom to _choose_ what they want for themselves. I've seen that at play with you again and again -- with Wanda; with Barnes. But it concerns me a bit that you seem to have some kind of hierarchy about it. The second I told you I was giving up _my freedom_ \-- that _everyone_ there was gonna _willingly submit_ to the authorities when they arrived to shut that shitshow down -- you didn't even _hesitate_ before accepting the cost."

"I wouldn't have guessed you needed my protection, Sam."

Sam stares at him. "Yeah. Because what would a Black man and a girl with harsh psychic realities have to fear from the police? Only Barnes is vulnerable to abuses by the authorities in your world, is that right?"

There is a pause as dread and realization flood Steve's veins.

"Yeah," mutters Sam, reading his face. He throws himself heavily into a chair. "Well, at least you're paying attention now."

Steve looks at him, blinking, unsure where to start. "I owe you more than an apology," he mutters eventually.

"Yeah," Sam agrees. "You do."

Steve looks up at him and gives a steeling sigh. "I _am_ sorry, Sam. I'm not sure what else to... I'll find a way to make it up to you."

Sam shakes his head at the floor. "You're still not getting what I'm saying. I need to know what's gonna happen next time before I decide to put my ass on the line for you again. Let's run a thought experiment. Pretend we're in the same situation again -- you and your boy are running away, we're still holding the line with the feds right around the damn corner, and I tell you to go. Now are you gonna turn around to pull me out of a bad situation a little faster this time, or are you gonna let it play out the same way you already did all over again?"

Steve can tell as he watches him that he's taking too long to think about it. The thing of it is that he doesn't want to lie.

"Yeah, Sam," Steve says eventually, quiet. "I show up faster."

His hesitation isn't lost on Sam. "But you still let me give myself up."

"If you offer? Yeah, I do." Steve peers up at him. "You did offer, Sam."

"Jesus Christ. I didn't _offer_ anything. I called it how it was."

"You bought us time."

"And you certainly took advantage of that."

Steve spreads his hands wide on either side of him, unsure of what else to say. "What can I do to make this right?"

"You can show up for me the way you show up for him!"

It rings wrong in the room. In the tense seconds that follow, Sam shuts his eyes, his lips pursed tight -- as though he hadn't meant to say it at all. All of a sudden, something clicks into place.

"Oh, Sam." Steve steeples his fingers over his face, embarrassed by his own ignorance. "Sam. I didn't realize."

Sam gets out of his chair, abrupt. Steve's concerned he's going to leave the room, but he just stands with his back turned, hands on his hips. "Don't pity me," he mutters to the floor.

"I don't. Believe me. I've been blind to everything around me, I know I have."

"Man, don't do this."

"I'm not doing anything. If only things had been different, Sam."

"If things--" Sam turns on his heel, facing Steve with an expression caught between anger and mortification. "What do you mean, _if things had been different._ "

And it's beyond inappropriate, Steve knows it is, but he hasn't slept in three days. His mouth twitches into a smile before he can stop it. 

"You met me at a very strange time in my life," he says, solemn.

Sam blinks at him. "Is that -- Fight Club?"

"Yeah."

Sam waits. "You're telling me Barnes is Tyler Durden."

Steve cracks another smile, tired this time. "You know what I'm trying to say."

They stare at each other through a steady silence, both of them rigid with unresolved tension.

"Well okay then," Sam says eventually, and collapses back down into the chair he'd just left. Then they both stare at a point in the centre of the table, neither of them moving.

"Should we hash this out?" Steve asks, quiet.

"I'd sooner not."

"Okay. Are we ... okay?"

"I -- guess."

"We don't have to be. You have every right to be angry."

"Thanks for your permission," Sam says flatly. 

Steve holds out his hands. "I just want you to know that I'm listening and that I'll -- think twice. About who's making what sacrifices. Next time."

Sam picks at his fingernails and doesn't speak for a long time. "Okay," he mutters eventually. "I guess that's all I really wanted out of you."

"So we are okay."

"Yeah, we're okay. We're not great, but we're okay."

"Okay." Steve smiles. "I can live with that."

Sam looks up at him with something other than ire or embarrassment, so Steve figures he's at least making headway.

"I'm gonna honest with you about what's next for me," Steve says, sitting up straighter in his chair. "I'm still tracking info that might help Bucky."

"No surprise there," Sam mutters, not bothering to conceal his bitterness.

"Honestly, Sam, it's the only thing on my horizon right now. I'm doing it as myself, not as Captain America. I don't want to be that guy anymore."

"I gathered that."

"And I don't always think I know what brought you out of retirement and back into the fight. Take this as a potential out -- no strings attached. I'm done with the Avengers, at least for the foreseeable future. I'll understand if you want to realign with them, or if maybe you want to step back altogether. Something to think about."

Sam stares through furrowed brow. "Is this you telling me you want me to go?"

"No. In fact, I could use the help, but only if you want to give it. I'm not trying to compel you to do anything you wouldn't offer freely."

"I know that."

"I want to be clear. I'm not trying to amass a team to fight for any grand ideal. This isn't an Avengers issue. This is about Bucky and Hydra." Steve frowns. "And a little about me, I guess."

Sam's eyebrows hit the ceiling. "Oh, you guess? Just a _little_ about you, huh?"

Steve gives a slow, sheepish smile. "Yeah, yeah."

"So I hear you saying you don't want to be Cap anymore. That means that if I join you, I'm signing up to work with Steve Rogers, is that right?"

"Just some guy from Brooklyn who's too dumb to run away from a fight." He gives a small smile. "That's me."

Sam lets out a slow exhale and leans back in his chair. "And Barnes," he clarifies, looking pre-emptively tired.

"I mean. Yeah." Steve purses his lips before he realizes he's done it. "When he comes back."

"When he comes _back._ Meaning he's not here."

"You seen him around?" Steve rubs a tired hand at his forehead as Sam stares. "Look, I'll tell you where he is if you want to know, but the information might be a liability to you. You know the drill with Hydra. They won't stop until they get what they want, and after what happened in Siberia, they're gonna want their operative back. "

"So what happened in Siberia?"

"The other Winter Soldiers were all killed by Zemo before we even got there. They were rarely deployed and seemed volatile, but it's still a hit." He can't seem to drop this tragic smile from his face. "Seems like Bucky's the only one they really got right, anyway, so even if they don't blame him for it -- which they probably do -- they're gonna be looking for him for other reasons."

Sam's looking at him carefully. Steve takes this as a sign to barrel on. "I'm going back to the facility to find out what I can, but I'm willing to bet it'll be picked clean already. My point is that your safety is pretty relevant to what I tell you here, Sam. I trust you with it, but you'd be putting a lot on the line just to have that knowledge in the first place."

"You're saying I have to opt in before you'll tell me."

"I'll tell you whether you want to opt in or not, but I can't protect you if you then decide to leave. This is my mission. Knowing about it might be a liability to you, and that liability might increase if I'm not also there to take some of the fall. It's up to you, but I think you've gotta ask yourself what your motivations would be to stay." Steve leans back in his chair, trying to do something casual with his form. "I can't answer for you if this mission will offer you whatever it is you got back in for. You should go off by yourself for a while. Take a damn vacation for crying out loud, figure it out. Come back later if that's what you want to do." Steve shrugs, trying to clear some of the tension out of himself. "But to be clear, this is not a just crusade. It is a personal one. You should know that going in."

"So justice doesn't feature."

"Justice features. Just depends on what kind of scale you're looking at."

Sam exhales audibly. "And if I do choose to follow you? What's the risk-reward balance?"

"I think I've been pretty clear on risk. It's high. I plan on going in pretty hard on these Hydra facilities. I'm looking for intel and I don't plan to stop until I've found it. As for reward -- not much." He gives another shambling, involuntary smile. "Captain America would tell you that fighting evil is its own reward, but maybe that's another thing you're better suited to seeking out on your own."

"So just to be clear on the endgame here, you plan on making a serious dent in Hydra's operations."

"That is an intended effect."

Sam shakes his head. "Man, you are fucking cryptic right now."

"Honestly, Sam, I'm still in the process of figuring out a lot of this stuff myself."

Sam sighs, exhaling long and slow, as though forcing annoyance back into its box. "So you and Barnes somehow _split up_ in your joint effort to take down Hydra."

"This is my crusade," Steve reiterates. "For now, Bucky's not part of it."

"Lover's quarrel already?"

His hackles still rise when Bucky's brought up. Steve's pretty sure he'll never be rid of that. "He asked me to help him get the trigger out of his head. I agreed. He's staying uninvolved to minimize risk. Not that hard to figure out." Sam sighs at him. "Listen," Steve continues. "You're a fugitive from the law right now because of me, and the pit could get so much deeper from here. I'm giving you the chance to opt out, start over."

"Start _over._ "

"Yeah. T'Challa could set you up with a safehouse, or I'm sure Tony would protect you."

"You _are_?"

"You didn't kill his parents," Steve says delicately.

"Neither did you."

"I was in the room at the time he found out who did. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't try to kill me now."

"You're _pretty sure._ "

"I can't pretend to be able to predict a single thing he does, Sam."

Sam shakes his head. "So those are my options? You, hiding, or Tony Stark?"

"There's still the Avengers."

"What? Where? Who? There's no one left. Barton's retired; Maximoff's with him. Romanov's got her own agenda, god knows where she's going next. Who _knows_ where Vision flew off to. Thor's never here anymore. That leaves Stark, and see above for the problems with that plan."

"You could build your own--"

"No I could not," Sam cuts in firmly. "I don't have your clout, Steve. Don't pretend I could generate a following the way you can."

"You could," Steve says quietly. "Captain America is up for grabs."

Sam seems finally rendered speechless, by that.

"It's one option. You -- might be the only person I really trust to take it over. But if you don't want it, I don't blame you. Just not seeing a better option isn't a good enough reason to stay. Not with me. Not given the risks."

Sam gives a long, tense beat. "That's not why I'd stay."

Steve's face softens. Silence grows long between them. 

"The problem with you is that you always know which way you're going." Sam rubs a hand over his face, annoyed by this fact. "Always. That's a hell of a lot more than I can say for myself right now. So, yeah. I guess I'm sticking around. For now. Until I can figure out what comes next."

Steve nods. It's not ideal, but relief still floods him. "You can leave at any time. No hard feelings."

"Yeah," Sam says -- a flicker of uncertainty. "Just do me a favour and look a little farther ahead next time. Think about the people around you."

"I will."

"We'll see."

Steve holds his gaze, trying to convey to him his conviction.

"Where is Barnes?" Sam asks him, then, utterly unblinking.

And Steve shuts his eyes and takes a steeling breath. "Do me a favour, Sam, and let me pretend to get drunk for this."

  


  


  


He still drinks for the burn and not the buzz, but after this long without sleep it's hard to tell the difference.

Natasha joins them -- shows up to tell him she sent the package off to Stark, only she's worried the R looks more like an N. "Address is the same, though," she says, and easily screws the top off the bottle of what appears to be absurdly expensive whiskey. "I'm sure he won't notice."

She takes her time unfurling herself beside them where they've seated on the floor, backs against the side of the bed, staring out into the Wakandan jungle. "Told Sam about Barnes?" she asks, amidst their silence.

"Yup," says Steve.

"That mean you're in?" she asks Sam, watching him as she sips her drink.

"Yup," Sam replies.

"Good," she says, and then moves suddenly awkward. "I have a favour to ask."

Steve looks over to her. "Anything."

It's Natasha, this time, who doesn't look at them -- only stares ahead into the trees. "I need--" She stops. Steve hears the stick in her chest. "Discretion," she redirects eventually.

"You got it."

"And I need you not to look -- _too_ hard."

Steve lets the breath leave his lungs as slow as he can. "You want me to see if we can collect intel about you while we're at it."

She nods, slow and halting. There's no tremor when she moves the glass up to her mouth, but only thanks to well-practiced control. "The Widow program at large, but -- yeah. Me, too." Finally, she looks at Steve, eyes as clear and honest as he's ever seen them. "There's something I need you to know before you do. About why I know Barnes."

"Odessa," Steve says, but Natasha shakes her head.

"1998," she says, breathing turning shallow. "Omsk."

  


  


  
**A N G E R**  
_june 2016_   


  
Natasha was 14; she had advanced through Red Room training faster than average. "Girls weren't usually given a mission until a couple years later," she tells him, "but I guess I showed promise."

She'd seen the Soldier before. He was occasionally integrated into training drills -- given instructions to pursue them but never to kill. "Maybe scoping us out," Natasha says, and Steve shuts his eyes and doesn't ask for details. This time he was her handler: there to provide guidance where necessary on the best way to pursue a target, on how to follow orders, on how to improvise in spite of them. Her target had been some diplomat, someone who hadn't paid his debts, and he was hardly fit or well-protected but "that didn't always mean an easy mark."

"He was my range support for the mission. A failsafe. If I missed, he'd finish the job. I was nervous, of course; I knew what -- _who_ he was. There's no reason he'd be brought in just for backup or guidance on a job like that unless there was another reason for it."

"As a failsafe for _you_ , you mean."

Natasha nods. "I try to flee, he cuts me down. Investment return."

"Killing a 14-year-old girl is an investment return?"

"One fewer defector."

Steve takes a steadying breath and takes a drink.

"The thing was," she continues quietly, "he seemed almost -- sympathetic. He saw my nerves and walked me through the mission again: where the target would be, not to waver in my pace, walk up, eliminate, walk away. Everyone's eyes on the victim, no one's on me."

"That easy, huh?"

"He suggested he'd provide a distraction if it didn't go that way. He was there to support. But, Steve -- I _felt supported_. He was definitely the Soldier, don't get me wrong -- his Russian was oddly formal, like he'd learned it out of a book. Everything in his movements was calculated, orchestrated, maximized for efficiency. I recognized it." A fractured smile flickers on her face. "A bit like dancing, in a way. But every once in a while -- keeping in mind this was twenty years ago -- it seemed like there was a blip. A slight hesitation, like something out of time. Every once in a while he'd look up like he'd remembered some chore he'd forgotten to do, or narrow his eyes at me like he didn't think I was supposed to be there."

"You _weren't_ supposed to be there."

"I was his mission. I was the _only_ one supposed to be there."

Steve takes a steadying breath. Natasha looks at the floor. "And yet -- despite the prevalence of his programming, he not only read my stress, he actually tried to alleviate it. Repeatedly. He told a _joke._ "

This forces Steve's head to snap up to attention. "He told a _joke_?"

"Sort of," she qualifies, and wrinkles her nose. "He told the equivalent of a joke from a textbook. I'm sure it was fed to him as part of his information programming, like in a history of Soviet culture or something. There was no inflection or anything, but... Okay. You ever hear about the time Stalin discovered Radek was telling jokes about him behind his back?"

"Is this the joke?"

"This is the joke. I didn't realize it was a joke; I thought it was part of my training. I said I didn't know the story. He said, well, Stalin didn't sentence Radek. He summoned him and said, 'I know that you are making fun of me.' Radek denied it and defended himself, but Stalin said, 'I know it. I know what you said. I am the great leader, I am a friend and teacher to all.' And Radek looked at Stalin and said: 'If I had told that joke, Comrade, I would have remembered it.'"

It takes Steve a second, but then it lands. "He said that to you."

"He said that to me, looking down at his rifle, as though discussing the mission. Same sombre tone. No sense of comedic timing. Very, very textbook. I mulled it over for a _long_ time trying to figure out where the lesson was, but then he picked up his rifle and indicated that it was time to get set up, and it wasn't until a few minutes after _that_ I figured out it must have been -- yeah. A joke." 

She shakes her head and swirls the liquid around in her glass. A long silence falls. Beside him, Steve can hear Sam breathing heavy, as though also forcing calm.

"My name was Natalia then," Natasha says, after a while. "Natalia Romanova. That'll be the name likely attached to any documents you find on the Winter Soldier, including that mission. I'll hook you up with some rapid translation software for any files you find in cyrillic, but you'll have to carry a smartphone."

Steve nods and closes his eyes; lets the blood pump hard, the outrage fill him and then filter out. "How many casualties?" Steve asks, voice strained thin.

"On that mission? Two."

A line suddenly solidifies from Bucky's profile in Steve's mind: _1998 -- Omsk, Russia -- Алексей Соловьёва_

"You missed," he guesses. "But Bucky didn't."

"I knew why he was there. I missed because I was shaking. I disobeyed orders. Tried to make the kill from beyond the scope of his rifle, convinced his sights were set on me." Her lip quirks; something ironic. "But I still tried to make the kill. I did not run, and I didn't trust him blindly to help me through it. I may not have hit my target, but I still passed the test."

Maybe the alcohol is doing something to him after all, because suddenly Steve is flushing hot; he can feel it on his neck, in his cheeks, heat building behind his eyes.

"We met at the rendezvous and I -- must have looked afraid of him, because he looked at me like he saw who I was. Through the training, through the programming. He said something like, 'It's worse when you fight it.' It shook me more than anything else did that day." Natasha shrugs. "Now that I've seen him when he's just following orders, I think he must have been out of the ice for a while, then -- couple days, maybe, to be given chance enough to develop, to follow more nuanced orders than 'eliminate target.' I think, by then, he understood he was not meant to be there." She shakes her head. "He was stronger than I was."

"You were a child," Steve gravels back.

"I--" She stops and purses her lips. "I don't want this to become about me. I have my agency. That's not what I'm fighting for."

When he brings himself to look at her, he does everything he can to keep anger out of his face. "What are you fighting for?"

"I want -- two things. I want to understand the possible implications of Red Room programming. I have questions. About how they made me." Her breath cuts short, sudden, stuck in her lungs. "The other thing I want to secure is a way to gain access to additional files in the future."

Steve's mouth is sour with bile, but he finds steadiness enough to leave him setting gentle fingers over hers where they're tensed against the floor. "You're not ready yet."

"I'm not ready yet," she agrees, and entangles two of her fingers with his. "But I will be someday."

"Okay," Steve says, and pours his drink down his throat before turning to look to Sam. "Okay?"

Sam's looking at Natasha like he's understood something revelatory. "Okay," says Sam -- the surest he's seen him since out of the Raft.

"Okay." Steve reaches out for the bottle sitting on the floor. "We start tomorrow."

"Thank god," say Sam and Nat in unison; and Steve pours them each another glass in long, aching silence as they sit on the floor and listen to the birds.

  


  


  


Bucky always had moved in just such a way. It was as though his knack for numbers and beats was driven by the pound of his heart -- steady, even, measured, like the man himself. Maybe his movements were in fact unremarkable, but they had never seemed that way to Steve's tachycardic heart. 

Steve had never understood music, and he'd never liked dancing, incapable of moving his feet to his whim. Bucky had _loved_ to dance, on the other hand, so Steve had made an effort to go. Not often; only on occasion, and only under the right circumstances. Bucky'd always had so much better luck getting women to dance with him, anyway, but Steve never minded watching. He always did like to see Bucky glad.

Only once had Bucky gotten Steve to dance in public. It had been stupid, a testing of the boundaries, after Bucky's date had up and left. Months before they'd gotten together but Steve already knew he loved him, and looking at Bucky sweating in front of him he hadn't quite contained the way he'd licked at his lips. 

It had been stupid but he'd wanted to taste him, to scan his tongue in the dip of his collar for salt and sweat. Bucky must have read it on his face because he'd said, "Come on, Rogers," with a tone Steve hadn't recognized. He'd been weak to it, weak to him, and before he'd known it Bucky had him by the hand and Steve followed him onto the floor. 

Bucky was half-drunk and maybe Steve was too, and the smell of whiskey was sharp on Bucky's breath. Bucky took up his hand and pressed his palm against his back and told him to relax, and he really had tried -- but he'd lasted only thirty seconds before he'd turned too red to stay. 

The thing of it was that he'd been so turned on. He'd _loved_ it, being taken up in Bucky's arms in front of all those people. Bucky was so beautiful; he'd just wanted to do it again. He jerked off to it in the dead of the night, wishing Bucky's hands would set on him again.

For all his embarrassment, no one had batted an eye. It had been fine, a joke between friends. They weren't the first two men to dance in that hall, they wouldn't be the last, and nobody'd cared either way; but, misreading Steve or concerned for his asthma, Bucky had never swept him onto the dancefloor again anyway.

Much later, after they were together, Steve still hadn't forgotten it -- had wanted to take Bucky to one of the _other_ dance halls, where they'd be _welcomed_ instead of just tolerated. But Bucky had always been too afraid of the raids, his eyes darting away whenever Steve mentioned it, and it was only a few abrupt subject changes before Steve had gotten the gist.

Still -- it wasn't near the last time they ever danced.

"Steve," Bucky'd say to him from across their kitchen table, from time to time. "Hey, Rogers. _My funny valentine._ "

And regardless of what he'd been doing, regardless of what he'd been ignoring him for, Steve would look up at that and beset him with _such_ a look. "Quit with that, I told you."

"Sweet," Bucky'd say, or sing, or something in between as he stepped out from behind the sofa, "comic valentine…"

"Bucky."

"You make me smile with my heart…!"

And Bucky would sweep him up, take Steve's hand in his own with an arm at his back, and Steve's sputters of protest would die into helpless affection as he pressed his face into Bucky's shoulder.

"Your looks are laughable… Unphotographable… Yet you're my favourite work of art!"

"You wouldn't know art if it hit you in the face," Steve muttered, but never stepped back.

And Steve had never known for sure but maybe Bucky was affected too -- pulled at Steve as though to take him in, hummed the interim lines much deeper in his chest. Steve just leaned against him and _loved_ \-- the way Bucky set his cheek against Steve's temple; the way the vibrations of his throat moved through him, as though keeping him alive; the way his feet shuffled against Steve's, knocking them gently this way and then that, trying stubbornly to force some rhythm out of him.

"Don't change a hair for me, Steve," Bucky would say, voice low with sincerity.

"Come on."

"Not if you care for me."

"I don't. You're awful, and you smell of nicotine."

But Bucky was genuinely tender, wasn't he, when he'd sing the last lines imploring Steve to stay; and then, just for a moment, Bucky would forget he was dancing and just _hold_ , and Steve had known he was home.

"I really hate that song," Steve told him when Bucky tilted his face up.

"No you don't," Bucky muttered, and kissed him something soft.

And that was the truth; he didn't, not anymore. Not when it led him to treat Steve like this -- brought Bucky to lift him on top of the table and step between Steve's straddled knees, kissing him slow and hot, feeling the blush against his skin.

"Each day is Valentine's Day," Bucky would mutter, lips right against him; and Steve would nod his agreement because that's all that was left to do, when he'd loved Bucky Barnes this much.

  


  


  


  
**A V O I D A N C E**  
_(because it's not quite denial when you keep staring at what you're not dealing with)_  
_july 2016_   


  


It takes Steve about five minutes to jimmy the lock on the Volkswagen's trunk. He'd thought it would take him longer, but there's something familiar, in the end, about breaking into a German vehicle. 

He throws himself into the passenger seat with Bucky's backpack and rifles loosely through it with a sigh. He's frankly surprised that the car is still here, let alone its contents. Possible Sharon had something to do with it; the last gesture she could make before her job made contact difficult. She could hardly be seen, after all, cavorting with a known fugitive. The CIA probably wouldn't take very well to that.

Bucky's backpack is as he'd said: shoved full of journals, many of them with post-its and extended notes poking out the sides. There are a couple trinkets Steve can't make sense of: a red ball with green and yellow stripes; a picture book in Russian that appears to be about farming. There are a few gloves in various styles, all of them left-handed. A change of clothes. Rations. Maps. No weapons; the CIA must have--

_Maps._

Steve pulls them out and rifles through them. Algiers. Lyon. Moscow. Kiev. He finds the one for Berlin and unfolds it haphazardly across the vehicle's dash. 

He isn't sure what he's looking for until he finds it -- a pinprick, barely a hole in the map at all, something that would've been invisible if he hadn't been scouring in search of any anomaly. Steve tracks himself a route and then folds it up at once; and when he waits for night to fall and gets to the intersection, he spends a few hours carefully breaking into people's homes in the general vicinity until he finds one that looks like Bucky's.

It's obvious when he finds it -- sparse to the point of dilapidation. It looks like it's been untouched for months, a stack of dog-eared paperbacks from the '60s stacked on a table by the bed. Steve throws the bag down and checks the flat for bugs and traps -- this time aided by an interference app Natasha added to his phone. ("Don't let it run all the time," she'd said. "That's as suspicious as anything else.") 

He spends the night slowly unpacking the backpack. There are seven journals; Bucky appears to have made one of them himself, using twine for binding. Three of them contain only research -- newspaper clippings, dating all the way from 1942; stories about Captain America from US newspapers, things Bucky never would have seen during the war. One whole volume is full of clippings from 1945: alarmist headlines decrying Steve's MIA status, speculating on the motives for his disappearance; a few arguing for the notion that he'd crop up again in a decade or so under an assumed name, having defected from the war.

Steve's skimming, but Bucky's notes lining the margins are easy enough to decrypt: _inconsistent_ , or _bad intel_ , or just strings of question marks.

The personal journals are harder to look at. Steve fans through the pages of one of them with his thumb, as though afraid it may injure him somehow.

He decides he's not ready for this. He puts it down and runs 20 miles.

When he gets back to the flat, the journals are still sitting on the table. He stares at them, as though they've somehow betrayed him.

Steve eats three potatoes and some beef jerky for dinner, and then goes to bed and reads one of the novels Bucky left by the bed. When he wakes up the next morning, Steve brews a pot of the shitty instant coffee he finds in a cupboard, then finds a roof he likes and watches the sun break over the horizon. 

He wonders if Bucky ever did the same, while he was here; if he thought of the war, coming back from a night on watch. Seeing Steve awake already, as though waiting for him. Asking for his report. Asking how many lives he'd taken that night.

"Fuck," Steve whispers into the morning, and launches himself back down onto the street. Five minutes later he's seated stubbornly in front of the journals again, trying to figure out which of the personal volumes might have come first. 

Once he thinks he's figured it out, he takes his phone out of his duffel -- the one he's never to use as an actual phone -- and holds the camera toward the first page, only faintly aware he's holding his breath as he does.

The text appears on his screen entirely unchanged.

Steve redoubles over the damned thing, pressing dumbly through the settings, trying to figure out if he's doing something wrong. But it would seem this is not, despite first impressions, an indication of his technological ineptitude; the translation software will not even turn the letters from cyrillic into roman.

Experimentally, he turns to the back cover of Bucky's notebook and writes out a phrase in French: _Je ne regrette rien,_ handily and readily translated by the app back into _I regret nothing_.

He moves the phone back to the cyrillic text. No change.

Relief flies stupidly in him. He's found a reprieve. He hates himself for it, so denies himself the opportunity to languish. He goes near halfway across town to find a payphone far enough away from the flat and calls the number Natasha gave him.

Natasha's voice, answering in hesitant Czech.

"Hey, it's me."

"Hey there." Relief in her tone. "Didn't expect to hear from you so soon. You get to Berlin okay?"

"I got here. Staying in one of Buck's old haunts, trying to figure out his journals. I'm actually calling with a tech question."

"Oh, boy. You couldn't have googled it or something?"

Steve bristles. He hadn't even thought of that. "I'm not sure it's googleable."

"What's the problem?"

"The app won't translate out of cyrillic."

"Did you fuss with the settings?"

"I fussed with the settings, I'm not that far gone. I checked it with French, too, which it translated fine. Is it possible the app doesn't do cyrillic script?"

"Not really. It's data input/output, it wouldn't differentiate between scripts like that -- unless, of course, the text was already coded." She clips out a sigh. "Yeah, okay. It's not the app."

Steve's stomach sinks. He'd thought this was all going a bit too smoothly. "I'm not sure what to… do about that."

"I can help," Natasha says, quiet and serious. "But it means trusting me to read through his journals. Could be a big job."

"He could've warned me about that," Steve mutters.

"Possible he didn't even know he was doing it. Too used to encoding automatically for reports. Did you look through all the books? They're all the same?"

A pause, then -- "I think so."

"Having trouble getting through them, huh?"

"It's -- under control."

"Okay. Well, listen. We're wrapping up around here, trying to figure out where to go next. Why don't I swing out there for a day and see if I can help?"

Steve hesitates, but he doesn't see another option. "You'd do that? You're on your own mission."

Natasha makes a noise in her throat, then puts him on mute. Steve assumes she's consulting with Sam on the other end of the line. "Yeah, it's no problem," she says upon return. "Sam wants a day to spend at the beach anyway. Something about taking in the beauty of the landscape? I'm pretty sure he means the partial nudity."

"Sunny days!" comes Sam's distant voice in the background.

"You don't want a day off too?" asks Steve.

"No more bikinis, remember?"

Steve's gut contracts. "Right."

"Besides, a tan clashes with my hair. Give me something to take my mind off all this, would you?"

Steve nods. "Okay. Thanks, Nat."

"No problem. Don't drive yourself crazy in the meantime, okay? I'll be there in a couple days."

A couple of days. Steve can wait that long.

He forces himself to hold off on dwelling on the journals until he takes his dinner, which means taking a _lot_ of runs. He learns Berlin; a handy side-effect. It turns out surprisingly easy to avoid looking at them at all, when he thinks to do it; to waste time before Natasha finds her way to his location. Given the choice he thinks he'd never look at them at all. 

Which is not to say the journals for a second leave his mind. For all Steve would rather never know their contents, he can't stop thinking of what those contents could be.

After two days of this nonsense he decides he's tired of himself; crawls in the window, disinterested in removing the contraption sealing the front door. He puts on another pot of coffee on for comfort's sake alone and sits down, newly committed to figuring out what he can out of the journals without the accompaniment of text.

His fist closes over itself as he sets it against the table, and he stares at the stack, unmoving.

Minutes pass uninterrupted, except for the tick of the hot plate cooling down.

Then Steve gets up again and takes a long, long walk.

The trouble is, at the crux of it, that he can't stop thinking about Bucky. He can't stop thinking about _this_ Bucky, the Bucky he's gotten to know, even if he has only known him a few days. He can't stop thinking about kissing him in that lift, brought to it by disagreement alone; he can't stop thinking about fighting by his side, about fleeing Siberia, about his injuries, his depth, the way his jaw ticks when he thinks. This is a different man than the one he'd known before the war, a different man than the one who punched him off that aircraft and into the Potomac, who hadn't known his name and yet hadn't let him drown.

Yet that man -- the Soldier -- is who he'll have to face when he sits down in front of those books. He doesn't know how Bucky got from there to here, but he's going to have to find out. He isn't sure anyone else on the earth could have done it. Not the way he did. And yet he did it.

Some mysteries should never be revealed.

Steve finally realizes what's stopping him from turning the page. He'd known too much and not enough about what happened to Bucky during the war. He'd had snapshots of his process, glimpses every six months in which impossible things transpired that he could never explain. He'd become afraid, grown serious, lost confidence even in the discovery of competence. Steve had hated to see it happen. He hated that he hadn't been there all along. He hated that he'd had to show up too late to that Hydra cell and see him lost to events that he would never describe.

Steve had wanted Bucky to tell him what happened then, but this time, he's not sure he wants to know. The fact that Bucky came back as the soldier and then left for two years… It's not that he's grateful for it, exactly, but more that he understands that it had spared him something. 

It's selfish. Steve is being selfish. Bucky had to live it, but here he is too afraid to even read about it.

He turns abruptly around and heads back home again. He sits down at the table, boiling the pot until the coffee turns hot again. This time he is driven by something like calm. He opens the book on the top of the stack, standing over it with his fists against the table, and leans over to look at its contents.

Indecipherable Russian text. But nothing that hurts him.

Steve flips the page, then does it again, looking for something that might help him make sense of -- anything. His eyes scan over the text, seeing almost nothing he recognizes but not really looking.

Then, amid pages of paragraphed cyrillic, Steve is suddenly faced with his own approximate likeness.

He hadn't known Bucky could draw. Maybe he'd picked it up from Steve over the years, or maybe it came out of some kind of drafting information input into his head. It's rough, at first, as though Bucky was still trying to parse through the fog in his brain -- like he couldn't remember some things, or like he couldn't manipulate the pen around the urge to draw lines and angles. 

Steve leafs quickly through the pages that follow to discover that drawings continue to be peppered throughout the journals, some of them angrily scribbled out, as though Bucky had been furious he hadn't been able to get it right. On the next several pages, eight drawings appear of Steve's face alone, all from the same angle and with the same wistful expression. 

They get closer to his likeness as the pages progress, but all of them show the same initial errors: the bridge of his nose is wrong, as is his brow, the space around his eyes. It's the exact area, Steve realizes, covered in most photos by his stupid Captain America mask.

The next page seems to get it right, and Bucky had known it. The image is well-shaded, sketched with more confident lines. He's not as good an artist as Steve, but it isn't bad. 

Steve sits down, body setting hard into the chair. It really isn't bad at all.

The next page shows a building instead, drawn with seemingly more characteristic angles. Steve registers with a shuddering breath that it was the fire escape in his old apartment in the Heights.

Steve carefully closes the book after that. He picks up a novel, until his fists unclench.

The next day, he exists in a standoff against them. The notebooks sit on the table, and Steve stands with his coffee and stares from minimum safe distance.

Then he goes out and runs, long before the sun's risen.

By the time he gets back, Natasha's sitting in his kitchen, apparently having broken in through the window, finishing his coffee for him. 

"Hey," she says idly, without even looking at him.

"Hi." He feels some strong urge to hug her in his relief, but settles for snatching his own coffee out of her hands. "Thanks a lot."

"I come all this way to translate Barnes' codified journals for you out of the goodness of my heart, and you won't even let me drink your coffee?"

"I'm a wreck, Natasha. Allow me my comforts."

She blinks up at him for the first time. "Are you?"

"If I wasn't in shape before, I am now. Berlin's nicer than I'd imagined. How's Croatia?"

She gives an evasive smile and looks away again. "Frustrating. All the files are in Croatian, unsurprisingly, of which mine is a little rusty. Sam's helping me organize, but since people don't seem to take so well to bird-men in the sky outside of the eastern seaboard I think he's feeling a little useless." She throws the first journal across the table in his direction. "Translated a few entries. The cipher wasn't that hard to figure out."

"You're kidding."

"Takes an agent to know an agent, I guess. You should read through them, make sure they make sense to you. All question marks are his, but clause order in Russian is a little loose, so rearrange words based on how you know he talks. I'm sure it'll make more sense when you do."

Ignoring the pounding in his heart, Steve cracks open the book and turns his back to her, collapsing onto the bed so she can't read his face. "I'll transcribe as much as you want," she says behind him, "but short of that I'll leave you the cipher and you can do the rest."

Natasha's neat cursive translates the entries into English on post-its stuck over each entry. Steve leafs through the first pages carefully.

**( 05 02 2014 )**  
_winter soldier_  
_subject 381_  
_likeness to: james buchanan barnes, sergeant (former)_  
_sn 32557058_  
_dob 03 10 1917 brooklyn USA_  
_parents george winnifred deceased_  
_sisters three rebecca (deceased), sally (status unknown), eleanor (deceased)_  
_drafted into second world war 10 1940_  
_dead in absentia 11 1944 germany_  
_"bucky"? quantity unknown_

**( 05 03 2014 )**  
_james buchanan "bucky" barnes?_  
_"bucky" barnes_  
_"bucky?"_  
_likeness between barnes and subject complicating calculations._

**( 05 05 2014 )**  
_captain america / steven grant rogers (dob 07 04 1918, brooklyn)_  
_actual subject, living. the mission(?)_  
_self(?) has unusual knowledge base, no documentation for following:_  
_parents joseph sarah deceased_  
_siblings unknown_  
_enlisted(?) out of brooklyn USA(?) 1942_  
_dead in absentia 11 1944 arctic (questionable)_  
_alleged revival 2012(?)_

**( 05 07 2014 )**  
_smithsonian exhibit full of horseshit. see accompanying volume._

**( 05 09 2014 )**  
_smithsonian exhibit possibly not that full of horseshit. see accompanying volume._  
_moving off eastern seaboard. location unsustainable._

  


Steve frowns. "Why the sudden change to colloquialisms?" 

"It's interesting, actually. That's an English colloquialism he tried to translate into Russian, but he only got as far as writing 'horse' and 'shit'. Unusually literal. Well, not that unusually literal, I guess, he's pretty literal for the first month or so of entries I got through, but it's weird to see a literal… metaphor. You know?" 

"He told me once I'd drown in horseshit," Steve mutters tensely, "just to make a point." 

When Natasha's silence draws long, Steve looks over at her to see her pursing her lips at him piteously. 

"What?" he bristles. 

"Nothing. Just… don't drown in _nostalgia_ , either." 

"I'm not gonna drown in nostalgia." 

"Okay. False hope?" 

Steve frowns at her. "Are you helping right now?" 

"Sorry." 

"What's _false_ about this hope? He told me answers are here, I'm looking for them. I'm not denying who he -- was." 

But Natasha purses her lips again. "I'm just not so sure you're going to find the answers you want." 

"You don't think there's intel here?" 

"There's intel. Just not -- about how he became the Soldier. Not yet, anyway." 

Steve moves his face away lightning-fast. Natasha knows him too well, sometimes. "Maybe that's a relief." 

"Maybe," she says quietly. "You should look at the cipher. Make sure it makes sense. Then maybe we could grab some brunch?" 

Steve nods through a sigh, and gets down to work. 

  


* * *

  


**( 07 01 2014 )**  
_Moscow. Spoke Russian without regressing, feeling pride somehow. Paid cash for a suite. Language feels easier now that I am no longer terrified to try it. No need to inflect or impose artificial affect. Might stay here for a while. Try to fit in._  
_Spent the day trapping the place. Hope to sleep eventually._

**( 07 03 2014 )**  
_Slept, woke up alive but in pain. Remembered hunger. Forced to pry plywood away from window, might need to use door on occasion to deflect suspicion._  
_Stomach resents contents. Ate too much? Six chocolate bars possible overshoot._

**( 07 04 2014 )**  
_first time I tried to kill him was when I took him out in '36 for his eighteenth and got him fucking wasted and I never forgave myself and I never told him how much he scared me he turned fully inside out and I have never known anyone so small to get so sick and he was sick a lot and it was my fault I have never been good I don't know why I_

**( 07 08 2014 )**  
_Canonization of Captain America began early after the war ended, 1945. At least seven revivals of propagandist material since -- graphics, action figures, posters. Second launch after alleged revival of Captain America from ice float in 2012. Possible memory implantation coinciding; handlers revised existing backstory in my head with figure in popular culture? Personal information from popular-culture figure introduced as part of target acquisition process? Likely. ~~I never~~ ~~Barnes never~~ I never knew him._

**( 07 09 2014 )**  
_He knew me. I may not have known him, but he knew me, how can that be._

**( 07 14 2014 )**  
_He used to smell like socks because they never dried long enough, he never let them dry for long enough. Why would I remember that? Why would they make me remember that?_

**( 07 18 2014 )**  
_Sally used to throw food at me and it was wasteful but I know why she did it, she used to want to watch me care about it every time. ~~And Steve~~_

**( 07 21 2014 )**  
_New theory: Hydra implanted him with memories of me as well. Target acquisition process, same as me. Only he works for SHIELD. Is SHIELD Hydra?_

**( 07 25 2014 )**  
_SHIELD is Hydra, but Captain America is not 'soldat.' Not in the same way. Seems to have brought SHIELD down. Maybe we should be friends after all._

**( 07 28 2014 )**  
_New theory does not explain away ~~the fact that we~~_  
_~~It seems possible we~~ _  
_Maybe we did know each other. Unlikely all of these memories are implants. They wouldn't implant sex memories if he was just the target._  
_Would they?_  
_WHY would they?_

**( 07 30 2014)**  
_They wouldn't. Not like this._

**( 08 01 2014) **  
_New question becomes why and how we are both here. If he is the same man. If I am._

**( 08 11 2014 )**  
_A lot of things were probably real or I was anyway. I hate that I believe that but I do and I don't know what else I have except the belief that I was real. If I was real then, I might be real now. And so might he, I guess. I guess all of it might be true._

**( 08 19 2014 )**  
_bad days can't fix it can't put a cover on it anymore I'm losing control and I don't know what to do. murdered envers, murdered vasquez, tried to murder steve, massacre, murder, the time rebecca's best dress got ruined, john f. kennedy, captain america, the way mom's soup always tasted too much like turnips after dad died like she couldn't taste it, steve, murder, stark, murder. no change in quality or strength of affect from memory to memory and if I feel like this, if my whole body remembers all of them, then they probably happened right. gastrointestinal upheaval I hate this I hate this, it's like that time I got steve so sick and now it's happening to me, do you think the universe has a plan, I don't believe in anything like that ~~anymore~~ but it's hard not to think it because steve's still here and so am I so what does that MEAN_

**( 08 28 2014 )**  
_Possible only behavioral, informational implants? Actual memories hard to fake, according to science. Images can be fake but. Affect harder to fake. I have a lot of affect. So._  
_Doing research when I can think straight. Science sounds really stupid this century. Maybe "memories hard to fake" isn't actually reliable._  
_Took a walk in the world today. Sun felt warm._

**( 09 04 2014 )**  
_Sometimes something kind of okay floats to the top. Sort of into that complicating shit the more it goes on._  
_White chocolate is not chocolate. Forgot about that._  
_Most days are really too hard for me to look for what I need and I'm compromising this position the longer I stay here. Making plans to move on until I can make better use of it._

  


* * *

  


Bucky had known what he was, before the war. He'd known he was handsome. He'd known he was charming. He'd known he had natural talents in math and science; that he could tear through a book in an hour flat and retain every word. He'd remember a skill if demonstrated twice.

But when he faltered -- when that confidence developed a fault -- he faltered _hard._

"Why me?" he'd asked once, made quiet by insecurity.

Steve had frowned up at him, hand poised against his drawing. "Huh?"

Bucky was practicing dexterity -- looping a cigarette between his fingers, pointer to pinky and back again. "People don't like the way we are these days."

"Who?"

"Them, out there. The same 'them' you're always putting your fists to."

"Oh, _them_."

"They don't bother you?"

"No more than others," Steve said. "Why would they?"

"Because they -- don't want us to do this anymore."

"Who cares?"

"I care, Rogers. They want us to be with dames."

Steve had blinked up at him. "And what about you? You'd rather be with a dame?"

"No." The answer was so immediate that Steve had almost laughed.

"Then what's the problem?"

Bucky'd put the cigarette in his mouth and then taken it out again, looking up at Steve with a sheepish glance. "Why me?" he asked again.

"You're wondering why _I'm_ not with a dame."

"Yeah."

"Have you _seen_ me with dames?"

Bucky had given a burst of laughter, born of nervousness. "Boy, have I."

"Then the question answers itself."

"But Steve," he'd said, and then gone no further.

"What is the way we are, then?" Steve asks, sketching the shadows over his face. "What is this _way_ you're so concerned about?"

He'd thought a long time before answering. "Lovers, I guess," he'd told his cigarette.

"Well? So?"

"They don't--" He'd gestured outside, then at his chest, then let his hand fall loose over his knee again.

Steve ached with sudden sympathy, but kept pencil to the page. "What's it matter what they think?"

"What's it _matter_?"

"I don't see how their views concern us overmuch. Not beyond a good brawl, anyhow." Steve smiled at him, warm and kind, and did not stop drawing.

"I don't want to deprive you of a good life, Steve. People are being violent."

"They were already violent."

"Remember when the world thought folks like us were a joke? Never thought I'd miss that."

"It'll relax. It has to. Can't just bury a history like that. We'll be all right."

Bucky'd looked up at him, circumspect but hopeful. "You really think so?"

"Just gotta wait it out. Don't mind staying in bed in the meantime."

The baldness of it had seemed to give Bucky pause. "I'm serious," he'd said, suddenly harsh. "Go on, get out of here. Go out tonight, meet a nice girl, take her out on the town."

Steve sighed and set his pencil down at last. It wasn't the first time they'd had this conversation. "I don't want to," he said patiently.

"Why not?"

"Because I'd rather be here with you."

" _Why,_ " he said again, desperation shredding its edges, " _me_?"

He needed to hear it sometimes, the way sometimes Steve needed to be pulled out of a fight.

"Because," Steve said pointedly, and let his silent stare say the rest.

Bucky shut his eyes and set his head against the wall behind him. "Is that really enough for you?" he asked, after a long moment of stillness.

"Of course it is," Steve said idly. "Is it not for you? Why the hell are you here with _me_? I've a lot to say about your ugly mug as you well know but others seem to like it all right. I mean it. You've seen how the girls get. Seen enough guys get a certain way with you, too."

"Oh, Jesus."

"You've got a quality to you, that's all I'm saying. You used to have a different date three days a week, remember that?"

"Yeah, yeah, can it already."

"I won't. You're sitting there asking why _I'm_ not with someone else? The first part is that no one else'll have me."

"That's not goddamn true. You just don't make the effort."

"Well the second part is I guess I've never had eyes for anyone else."

He'd muttered profanities under his breath and with a hint of a smile, as though the fact that they kept landing here was both welcome and a personal affront. "Well, maybe that's your mistake."

" _My_ mistake? I'm trying to say you could walk out the door and get a date in five minutes. You're so concerned about giving _me_ a good life, but what about your own damn self? Why not find someone _you_ can go out with nowadays? Well, you don't want to," Steve finished for him. "You want to be here, sitting in the dark and wishing you were smoking that cigarette but too happy posing for me like damn Venus to get up and do it. Aren't you? Isn't that right?"

The hinted smile had become a grin, if one subdued by shyness. "I don't know how you see this shit with such clarity," he'd muttered down at his hands.

And that was the thing about it, wasn't it? Bucky always did rely far too much on _reason_.

"You know anything about Ancient Greece?" Steve asked, sudden.

Bucky looked up at last. "You gonna give me that speech again about how guys have been shacking up with guys since the beginning of time?"

"No. Though I could, if you need it."

"I'm fine without. This is along the same lines?"

"Same book, less subtext."

"Fine. Let's hear it."

His tone had been annoyed, but Steve had heard the smile in it anyway. "The Greeks had this idea that all artistic inspiration had sources," he said, quiet, shading as he talked. "Nine muses. Literature, poetry, architecture, song -- all this came from nine emblems. You know, representatives of the craft."

"I never hear you talk about anything the way you talk about art. Why is that?"

"I'm trying to explain, if you'd shut your fat mouth a second."

Bucky grinned. "Jesus. Sorry. Floor is yours."

"Artistic inspiration doesn't just happen, they thought. Something has to inspire it, something outside yourself. That's the only way you get to feeling like you have to capture something, Buck. You _have_ to, or else you might die." 

Steve had kept sketching; avoided Bucky's eye. Bucky'd waited a moment, then asked, as though interpreting his silence -- "So who's your muse, then?"

Steve had looked up at him, then, the smile growing slow over his face. 

"Oh, no," Bucky said, voice suddenly deep. He covered his face with both hands. "Oh, Christ, Steve, don't."

"Bucky."

"I can't believe you."

"I thought you never get embarrassed."

"I'm embarrassed _for you_."

"Bucky," Steve said again, licking his lips in some failed attempt to subdue his grin. "Look at me."

Bucky had taken another second; then he'd dropped one hand and repositioned the other horizontally over his mouth, as though to withhold his smile. Steve had seen a tremor in his fingers before he'd managed to get a grip on it.

He'd looked at Steve with so much hope, just then.

" _You're_ my muse, Bucky."

" _God,_ " Bucky said, somewhere under his hand. He shut his eyes. "You just couldn't let it drop."

"You asked a question, I answered it."

"It's a stupid answer."

"You're the reason for all of this shit lining our apartment. I hope you're happy."

He'd looked away; reset his hand against his face. "Shut your goddamn mouth, Rogers."

"Why do you think I draw you all the time? You're not _that_ beautiful."

Bucky's eyes flitted back to his. "I'm a picture."

Steve had only smiled and kept on shading. "Not long now."

And Bucky had stared at him and Steve had waited; reveled in the way nameless emotion filled the room. _Moments like these,_ he'd thought quietly to himself.

"I know you don't like me to move," Bucky said suddenly, pushing himself off the floor. 

Then the moment was broken. "Aw, no, Buck, come on."

"I'll go back."

"It'll never be the same."

"You'll remember it." Bucky'd taken the pad of paper out of his hands and tossed it aside.

"Bucky, wh--"

He'd taken Steve's face between both of his hands and tilted it heavenward, kissing the sentence out of him. Bucky'd leaned over him until Steve had lain down, elbows crawling out behind him with Bucky's mouth hot against his neck.

" _Your muse_ ," Bucky'd muttered, low in his throat. "Do me a favour, Rogers. Never tell anyone that again."

"How could I tell anyone else?" Steve said, gripping his fingers tight in Bucky's hair. " _They're_ not my muse."

His head collapsed against Steve's shoulder. "God, shut _up._ "

"I don't know if I've ever seen you blush before."

"Who, me?"

"I saw that over there."

"You're hallucinating, pal." 

"If this is what it gets me I should call you my muse more often."

"Don't you dare."

Steve had moved Bucky's face to his and kissed _him_ , this time, keen to remind him of exactly the reasons they both choose to be here. "I don't want anyone else," Steve muttered. "You getting that through your thick skull yet?"

He had been, it seemed, still struggling; he'd shrugged as though it was not yet obvious. "You got enough things in your life without me putting another obstacle into it."

"You keep talking like you induced me into this. Hate to be the one to break it to you, Buck, but not everything is about you."

"I'm just saying different choices could be made." From the way he'd been saying it against Steve's neck -- the way his hands worked under his shirt and gripped at Steve's waist until his fingers almost touched together over the ridge of his spine -- he was not making a convincing argument. "We could stop this."

"Could we?"

"Technically speaking."

"Well, I don't want to."

"Well, fine," Bucky'd said; and then he'd held Steve down and kissed him whole and sloppy. Bucky's weight had been so warm and so whole on top of him and Steve's hips had started to move, and Bucky's fingers crooked at the waistband of his trousers and found a way to get them open before moving his mouth away again, over Steve's jaw, along the line of his throat, pressing hot kisses to his collarbone. 

Steve sighed and gave himself over to it, one hand thrown over his eyes, the other in Bucky's hair. "I meant it, you know," he'd rumbled as Bucky'd pushed his shirt high on his chest.

"I know you did," said Bucky. "That's the worst part."

"Bucky--"

"Why don't you tell me about these muses?" Bucky's lips seemed to count Steve's ribs.

"Sure," said Steve.

A pause, then -- "Well?"

"What, _now_?"

"That's how you earn it, Rogers."

"Since when!"

"Since you said that damn blockheaded thing. If I'm to be your muse, you're to be mine. Fair exchange."

Steve had laughed and run his fingers through Bucky's hair, but Bucky'd only planted his chin at Steve's belly and looked up at him. "Aw, geez, you're serious."

"As a housefire."

"What's your artform, then, sucking cock?"

"If you're inclined to disagree, Rogers, I can leave."

Steve had laughed and pulled at Bucky's fringe to keep him close, then sighed as his breath skated hot over Steve's skin. "Okay, all right, fine. You gonna make me go through them all?"

"You bet."

"Come on."

"Better get started if you want to come sooner."

Steve had rolled his eyes, but tilted his head back and muttered, "Calliope," and Bucky had set to work at once: his hands again moving, setting against him, mouth hot on his stomach. Steve smiled at the ceiling. "Epic poetry. Chief of all muses. Ecstatic--" He'd been made to swallow hard as Bucky's mouth set against his hip -- "harmony to her voice."

"Mm," said Bucky. "Epic, huh?"

"I -- hate you."

"You do not. Who's next?"

"Clio. She covers history… the Proclaimer, daughter of Zeus."

Bucky's fingers pulled Steve's trousers off his hips and he'd been rock hard, he'd known he was, just from Bucky's subsequent hum. "Talking about these girls is getting you hot, huh Rogers?"

"Yeah. _That's_ what's doing it."

"So it's me, then?"

"Yes, jackass, it'd be you. You gonna make good or keep talking?"

Bucky had looked up along the line of him and met Steve's eye as he put his lips against his cock, and Steve had arched and sworn until Bucky had smiled and held his hips to the ground. "Come on. Where were you?"

Steve hummed as Bucky put his lips to him again. "Euterpe."

" _You_ twerp."

A sigh or a laugh; Steve's fingers in his hair. "Euterpe, muse of melody."

Bucky'd hummed as he'd taken Steve slowly into his mouth.

"From the Greek -- to please -- well--"

"Keep going," he'd muttered, before wrapping his mouth around him again.

"Erato…"

But that had been all he managed, the syllables devolving into hitched sighs. Bucky sucked him off a while, clearly pleased to do it, until such a time as he popped his mouth off and said, voice low, "Love poetry," and then nudged his nose at his leg as though to encourage him to keep talking.

But Steve looked up at him in fury and surprise. "You _know_?"

"'Course I know. Read that book right after your first speech about it."

"Then _why_ \--" Steve moaned, clenched his hand in Bucky's hair as Bucky set back to work on him -- "why would you have me--"

"Like hearing you talk about it. Told you, Rogers. You inspire enough yourself."

Laughter thrilled in him and Bucky's lips ran soft; Steve's laughter turned hacking so quickly that Bucky looked up at him, to make sure he was all right. "After Erato," he'd prompted, once satisfied.

"You _know_ ," Steve said, and arched his back against Bucky's attentions.

"You tell me. Nine muses, Rogers, let's go. Four down."

So Steve had told him. He'd felt compelled to, by some force beyond himself. Melpomene and Polyhymnia and Terpsichore and Thalia had come tumbling out of his mouth of their own volition and Bucky'd swallowed them down, swallowed him down, pink lingering on his cheeks. By the time Steve got to Urania he was a sodden stuttering mess, his hips canting into Bucky's mouth, Bucky's fingertips pressing into his hips as though in veneration of their breadth; and Steve had looked down at him and Bucky'd looked back, reaching up to grab Steve's hand out of his hair. Bucky'd intertwined their fingers and made Steve come-- 

And all at once it was certain, _so_ clear to them, that neither one of them wished they were anyplace else at all.

  


  


  


  
**B A R G A I N I N G**  
_october 2016_   


  


Three-quarters of the way through his journals, Steve finds the intel Bucky was talking about. 

It's been nearly three months of moving around, trying to retrace his steps and his research. Bucky'd started in Moscow, it seems, then moved on to Kiev, Sevastopol, Athens, Algiers, Lyon. Then he'd spent time in Berlin and then doubled back to Moscow, and it's _here_ , having decked out the walls of Bucky's old Moscow hideout in what Sam will only term "Beautiful-Minding it," that Steve finally finds the set of entries that crack it all wide open.

It doesn't stand out to him at first, because of course it wouldn't: more of the same, more of Bucky's calculated observations interspersed with psychological meandering. It's rigid or disastrous, emotion running his phrases out of the cipher and into English from time to time, facts stated as though reporting, until --

 _Seventeen_ , out of nowhere, absent a date, over and over. In Russian, in the cipher, _seventeen,_ then in English -- _seventeen,_ with a hand shaking so violently, something spilled in the corner of the page. Again in numerals, then in the cipher, _seventeen,_ and then: 

_Walked to the pharmacy then kept on going, stared at Steve's window, climbed up the fire escape, wanted so bad not to love him. Wanted to feel different but all I could feel was this and I thought I would die from feeling that way but I won't die now. Those bastards used him against me and now I am this, why in hell wouldn't they kill me instead of perverting the only good thing I've ever known oh jesus god save him he can never know, he can never find out about this._

Then, in shaky Russian, uncoded: _семнадцать_.

The next day, in English: _But how could I have ever forgotten feeling like this?_

Then, four days after that: the name _Karpov_ , followed by an address.

The next entry is from a week later, when he'd already arrived in Prague. He'd written: _It's too dangerous. They will turn me again. Running is not cowardice, some answers counterproductive. Try to prosper._ Then after that there are common observations -- the weather, food he likes or doesn't like, interspersed with an occasional memory, shortly summarized: _Walking with Steve by the Hudson,_ or, _That girl from 1982 lived, may have been because of me._

None of the following entries, Steve finds, use the cipher again -- as though he was trying to distance himself from the person who would have used it.

Steve sits with a hand clasped over his mouth, then turns the pages back and goes to the address Bucky lists.

It is an apartment, or had once been, above a broken-down market. The market has long since closed and the apartment is trapped, though why is not initially obvious. Steve neutralizes the traps and steps hesitantly forward, but nothing hits him; in fact, little of interest stands out at all. 

The place has been cleared out in a significant way -- to the point of destruction, the walls falling in ruin. Scorch marks make themselves known; small piles of ash and charcoal still remain. The scene is one of disregard for everything except to eliminate any trace of what might've been here.

Bitterly frustrated, he calls Natasha to vent.

"Wait," she says shortly. "What kind of traps?"

Steve describes them to her, and Natasha hangs up. Steve calls back again, but she only snaps at him that she'll be there soon. At a loss, Steve returns to the apartment until Natasha calls him, 18 hours later; and when she asks him where the apartment is, they meet there without a second wasted.

"FSB," she mutters, when Steve shows her. "You're sure this is the address?"

"Yeah."

"And what was the name?"

"Karpov. Following kind of immediately on the heels of what looked like a revelation of some kind? I can't make heads or tails of it."

"But you followed up on the address."

"It seemed significant, yeah. How are you, by the way?"

"Shut up," Natasha mutters, and Steve smiles despite himself. "There's something I'm missing here."

"FSB is what came after KGB, right?"

"Yeah, proud arbiter of the Red Room program post-1991. They…" She shuts her eyes and winces, as though suddenly making a connection. "They would have been in charge of Barnes, too, I guess. If Barnes tracked this guy down and he was FSB, he might've been part of the Winter Soldier program -- former handler, or something."

Intuiting something he can't quite place, Steve rests a concerned hand against her back. "You okay?"

"Fine. Start turning things over, see if you can't track something down. Show me whatever you find, I'll know what we're looking for when I see it."

Natasha moves away from him and Steve watches out of the corner of his eye, but the tension in her form ekes out soon enough once they start doing something arduous. Between the two of them they manage to flip over what's left of the apartment's furniture -- Natasha tearing into charred pillows like it's her job, Steve following suit and crashing his fists into floorboards. Eventually they turn up an alcove the FSB agents must have missed: behind the wall, where a line of spackle appears out of place against the floor.

"Sloppy," Steve mutters, and Natasha smiles at him before they both punch into the wall at once.

Within is not much; a briefcase, files in Russian, far beyond Steve's comprehension. Natasha scans through them, her eyes moving more quickly than Steve can fathom. "Yeah, blah blah, subject lost, concerns for well-being, whereabouts. Looks like this is recent -- last year."

Steve's heart rate speeds up, suddenly -- the closest thing he's gotten to a lead. "So Karpov was looking for him."

"Yeah." She frowns and turns the sheet over in her hands. "It's interesting. Government is notorious for its poor written records. Willing to bet Karpov himself made carbon copies of these to cover his own ass. That's why they're still here; the team that cleaned this place never knew about it."

"Never noticed the pretend wall?"

"Well, they're on limited resources these days."

"Hey, where's Sam by the way?"

"Left him in Minsk. Made him promise not to crusade into any bases without me."

"You guys need help?"

"Not from you." She smiles at him to prove she isn't being flip. "Kinda feel bad you're doing most of this yourself."

"Don't. Most of Buck's stuff is--" He shakes his head. "Well, let me know if you need me."

"I will," she mutters, then hands him a page. "This is Karpov's report post-Moscow, probably mid-2015. Second paragraph, he says he's following a lead to Cleveland."

"What? On _Bucky_?"

"Unless there's another 'soldat'."

Steve frowns down at the paper, though he still doesn't understand a word. "Could it be a feint?"

"Hard to tell. Not sure why he'd deceive the FSB like this, especially if he was an old handler of Barnes'. Nothing in the journals to shed any light on this?"

Steve shakes his head. "He's weirdly tight-lipped on this mission. Recorded the address, then nothing for a week, by which time he'd already gone to Prague and all but stopped trying to track answers."

" _Really?_ "

"Said it was 'too dangerous'; better to live, or something like it."

"Whoa. That almost sounds like he was deterred by programming."

"I don't think so." He knows Natasha's looking at him, but she seems to let it drop when he doesn't catch her eye.

"Okay, well. You okay to let me crash where you're staying for a night? I want to poke around these files so I don't send you into a trap."

"You think there's something here?"

"Almost definitely." But there's something evasive in the curve of her mouth. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"Do you know what you're looking for?"

Steve opens his mouth, then closes it again. "Set of trigger words that invoke Bucky's assassin programming, recorded in writing, or information on same," he manages eventually. "Both would be ideal."

Natasha nods, thoughtful. "I think the words themselves are gonna be the easier."

Steve nods, too. "I'll take what I can get."

  
 

  
 

  
 

The next morning, Steve wakes up to find a book on the table -- red with a black star, like the star on Cap's uniform.

Natasha's left a note on the table beside it: _Had to go. Will explain later. This has what you're looking for._

Wincing, Steve flips the book open, as though waiting for it to explode; but instead it's only full of notes, unciphered, as though its author had been confident no one would find the book in the first place.

Steve runs its contents through his translator to discover it's a handler manual of some kind, dated from around the time Steve found Bucky in DC. The first pages contained a unit number, a detailed list of previous missions, including every deployment since 2011 -- three of them, including 2014 (targets: Nicholas Fury; Steven Rogers; Natasha Romanoff). Notes on Bucky's whereabouts had been tracked thereafter; Hydra, like Steve, had been one step behind him the whole time, only less successful. They had found a couple safehouses and -- Steve had been right -- destroyed them (one in Sevastopol; another in Lyon). They'd intended to shake him, draw him out; but had been unsuccessful. As per Steve's suspicions, Karpov seems to have made a note that the trail had gone cold and that he was relocating to Ohio for a secondary mission.

Several blank pages. Then -- 

Details on Bucky's programming, including the trigger words.

Steve lets his phone-translator clatter against the table and presses his fingers to his temples; breathes for five minutes, then picks it slowly up again.

The moment he does -- the moment the words crystallize on his screen in succession -- the pound of dread in Steve's chest only builds.

_Seventeen._  
_Nine._  
_Freightcar._

Bucky'd told him the triggers had been built off of Steve, but only now does Steve understand what he'd meant.

  


  


  


Bucky had come home one night a few months after Steve had moved in and set a bottle of liquor down hard on the table. "Now don't get mad about it, but I just walked out on my job," he'd said. "I swear it, Steve, I'll make rent by a mile."

Steve hadn't been mad at all. He'd been actually delighted, because Bucky'd been miserable and Steve never saw him. He was too smart for that lark, anyway, and Steve was so in love with him these days that he couldn't do anything but draw him in compromising positions. 

If Bucky was home, Steve at least couldn't draw him naked. This turn of events would be good for his productivity.

Steve forced a frown anyway and took the liquor out of the bag: bootleg, out of habit, though prohibition'd been done for years. "Just walked out, huh?"

"Just walked out."

"Any particular reason?"

"Guy tried to clock me but I clocked him instead."

"Just out of the blue?"

"Well, okay, I suppose we exchanged some words, but he wasn't very bright so he resorted to less ambiguous modes of communicating his displeasure."

"And so right after this tussle which you have escaped without a mark on you, you just walked off the job right then and there because of… momentum?"

"Well, no, all right, I suppose it was more of a disciplinary meeting I technically walked out of."

Steve had hoped beyond all the hope that Bucky couldn't see the stars in his eyes. "Well, I suppose I can hardly be upset about that."

And Bucky had grinned at him and Steve had grinned back and he must've been excited or something, because he'd somehow agreed to follow Bucky to some rooftop he'd "found." 

("What does that mean? How do you _find_ a rooftop?"  
"You telling me you never scope out rooftops of your own, Rogers?"  
"No. No one does that."  
"Well you better start before all the good ones are gone.")

Before Steve knew it they were half through the bottle, and that had been a lot for Steve's constitution, so before he could stop himself he'd asked Bucky why he was here instead of out with some dame. 

Bucky'd asked what Steve was implying. "I can't have a nice night in?"

"Given that you fall in love once a week or so, I'd assumed not. Pardon me for jumping to conclusions."

All at once, the atmosphere had changed around them. Steve looked at Bucky to see his eyelashes low on his cheeks. "Once a week?" Bucky said, his mouth hinting at a smile. "Please, Rogers. Once a month, tops."

"You're a beautiful man, Buck. You could increase that average to its rightful levels."

Bucky'd given a burst of laughter, though Steve hadn't known why. "I'm all right, actually, thanks."

"Are you?" It had been strange language out of Bucky; the majority of the time he was so much on Steve's case about finding a date that it had become cloying. "I'm surprised you have a limit."

Bucky'd knocked the bottle absently against his leg and not looked at him. "Guess it all feels a little empty these days. Pursue, obtain, throw up a skirt, find another one to chase. What's exciting about that?"

"You're right," Steve had deadpanned. "I could see how that could get tiring."

"Not tiring, per se, just… empty." He'd shrugged. "I stand by it."

"Well, maybe you oughta consider settling down for a change. Find someone to come home to instead of someone to go out with."

It had been the kind of pause that had settled low in his gut for reasons Steve hadn't known, but half of what he said sounded like suggestion to his own ears these days so he chalked it down to overtransparency and vowed to shut his goddamn mouth.

"Maybe," Bucky said eventually, but left it there and drank liberally. "What about you, Rogers? You thinking of getting serious about something for once in your life?"

"I'm always serious," Steve told the sky.

"Well, that's true enough. I meant about dames."

"I dunno."

"You should, you know. You're charming enough when you put the effort in."

Steve had given a hint of a smile. Same old routine. "I dunno about that either."

"You are," Bucky'd said, and it had been plied with such strange sincerity that Steve had been forced to listen. "You got a lot going for you, I wish you'd see that. You move around so much of the time like you got a rod up your ass and another one in your shoulders, but look at you now." He'd gestured at him, leaning against some wall with his legs out long in front of him. "Cracking jokes, giving me shit. That's the Steve Rogers that people oughtta meet. Most of 'em don't have time for an awkward kid who can't put his limbs in order, but a hell of a lot 'em would sure as shit have time for you."

"You think the awkward kid's not me just as much?"

"I think you're a hell of a lot more than you give yourself credit for. Give 'em a talented artist and a guy with a heart like yours and you'd be unstoppable."

Steve had smiled, shy with it. "Come on."

"I mean it. You're the best guy I ever met, Rogers. The world'd be lucky to see what I see outta you."

"Thanks, Buck." Steve'd had to take a deep, steadying breath before he felt confident enough to take the liquor out of Bucky's hand. "I guess that means a lot to hear."

And Bucky had nodded but not said anything, and it had been another one of those silences that had bunched within him and made him ache.

Steve had to do something to break the tension, so he asked, "So how many times have you been in love really?" and Bucky had laughed and looked down at his hands.

"Honestly, Rogers," he'd said, and it must have been a night for it because Steve had never believed him more, "just the one."

Steve had blinked, genuinely shocked. "Really? One?"

"One." Steve hadn't understood the smile on his face, but rather than alleviate the ball in his gut it had only intensified. "Guess I find it hard to connect with people at large."

"That's hysterical," Steve said immediately. "You've never met a post you couldn't talk into a date."

Bucky's laughter had been so barking and loud that Steve had startled. "When have I ever dated a post?"

"Millicent Atwater," Steve said at once, and Bucky had tried to cover his laugh with a cough.

"Oooh, cruel, Rogers. Be nice about Millicent, she was a nice girl."

"Yeah. Looked great on _my_ sofa while you--"

"That sofa's your mother's so I hardly see--"

"That doesn't make it better!"

"I wouldn't take a girl to third base on _your_ sofa, Rogers."

"I really, really doubt that."

Bucky had grinned at him, and in the street's dim light his crooked tooth had stood out in just such a way to make Steve's gut lurch again.

"So was it Millicent you loved?" Steve asked, tearing his gaze away, voice deep with false sarcasm.

"No," Bucky'd said, tone equally deep, and offered nothing more.

"All right, message received. I'll drop the issue. I guess it didn't work out that well in the end anyhow, whoever it was."

"These things aren't always within our control."

Steve stared at him. "Wow, Buck. That borders on philosophical. You dipping into the arts for once in your spare time lately?"

Bucky's eyes had found his, as fast as though scandalized. "I read all the time!"

"Yeah, _way_ too fast. Feel like you never really read any of it."

Bucky'd glared at him out of the corner of his eye without really looking at him, and then said -- "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it alterations find, or bends with the remover to remove…"

"Holy shit."

"I have depth, all right?"

Steve had blinked, believing him. "Never in question."

"Should I go on," Bucky asked, "or are you sold?"

"I'm sold, all right, but don't let that stop you."

And Bucky'd leaned back as though relaxing for the first time in days and said: "Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom..."

Something about it had forced Steve to relax, too -- a note in his tone of his voice or in the ease of his words, or the fact that Steve had never known Bucky to like a thing about poetry, only for this to spill out of him like honey. 

"If this be error upon me proved," Bucky said, by then muttering; "I never writ, nor no man ever loved."

Steve had waited, basked in it, edge gone to his wanting but wanting ever still.

"I think," Steve said, when the silence drew tense again, "that it's actually... 'looved.' So it rhymes. But solid go at it, Buck, really. Points for effort."

He'd looked over just in time to see the smile spreading over his face, still as he was, eyes closed to the sky. "I really hate you, Rogers," Bucky muttered, smile never fading.

"Yeah, yeah."

"You know... it's actually 'pruhved.'"

"You think _you're_ righter than me about Shakespeare?"

"Can _you_ recite that sonnet?"

"Why would I put in that kind of time? Not all of us have legions of women to woo."

But Bucky'd huffed suddenly and looked away. 

"Hey," Steve said. "What'd I say?"

"Still think that's all I care about? Dames?"

"No. I didn't mean -- I'm sorry, Buck, I was just making fun."

In the end he sounded more annoyed at himself than he did at Steve. "It's fine. I'm just -- it doesn't matter." Steve had watched Bucky roll the rim of the bottle around on his thigh, neck curved in such a way.

"So it was recent, then?" Steve asked, quiet.

"What was?"

"That falling in love thing."

Bucky'd finally adjusted his head and stared straight ahead. "Not really. Just can't seem to shake it, no matter what I do."

Steve hadn't known what to say to that, so he hadn't said anything.

"So how many times have you been in love, anyway?" Bucky asked him, sudden. "Heart your size, gotta be a few."

And Steve had moved his face away so fast that it must have looked wrenching, abolishing in one any calm he'd accumulated. "You think so?"

"Just a question."

Steve had slunk down, back curving, neck turned out as he stared at the sky. "Same as you, Buck," he said, forcing his throat to steady. "Guess I've only been in love the once."

And he'd known Bucky's eyes were boring a hole in the side of his face as though extracting answers through force of will; but Steve had just kept staring at the sky, heart pounding and making him stupid until Bucky shifted and slunk down next to him.

"Hope it's going better for you than it's going for me," Bucky muttered at last, and Steve had laughed thickly, emotion stubborn in his throat.

"Guess we're pretty pathetic, huh?"

"Ah, it's not so bad. At least we got each other to keep us warm in the meantime."

That one had hurt, physically, like a knife in his back; but Steve swallowed and said, "I guess we do," steeled to bear this feeling to the edge of doom.

  


  


  


  
**A N G E R**  
_november 2016_   


  


"Brainwashing is not an adequate term for what has occurred to your friend." 

Steve is looking out the window when T'Challa says it, but the words still hit like a blow to the chest. There is an awkward pause; then the rifling of pages. Steve takes a steadying breath and shuts his eyes in anticipation of T'Challa's next words. "Brainwashing as a process suggests that conditioning via external means, but incorporating internal processes, has been used -- propaganda turned into belief by repetition, for example. It is likely that this has been done to him, but that is not all. Barnes has additionally had information which is not his own introduced into his mind as though it were."

Steve shuts his eyes; T'Challa continues. "He has been tricked to believe he acquired this information by the legitimate means -- learning, experiencing, and so on. In fact, the information was likely extracted from the minds of others and placed in his mind via mystical means."

At this, Steve finally turns around. "You mean something like Wanda can do."

"Similar," T'Challa agrees. "That is my theory, at least. I also find it likely the process was eventually converted into artificial form; that the information they wished to implant within him was kept 'on file,' in a sense, to be conveyed to him again and again or to be updated as needed. This would have allowed those keeping Barnes captive to impose the desired knowledge set whenever they pleased; to effectively copy over his own consciousness each time he regained control."

Steve points at T'Challa with a contemplative finger as he thinks this through. "Bucky's journals… he mentions in the early entries, how he didn't have any 'affect' attached to some of what was in his head. That's how he sorted through what was real and what wasn't when he was…" Steve only cuts off because his throat has suddenly done the job for him. He looks away; puts his hands on his hips, fights for control. 

T'Challa, fortunately, seems to have understood the point he was angling for, because he nods his agreement. "Precisely. The difficulty with this sort of informational integration is that it mistakes the human mind for a computer. This is not so. The organic processes of the mind are too complex for data to be merely introduced and integrated as though natural thought. Barnes would not have been able to relate to this information the same way as he could with legitimate information. It is perhaps unsurprising, given this, that his true consciousness continued to surface, even after repeated attempts at superimposition of the artificial data."

"You're saying that he may be able to differentiate between Hydra memories and his natural ones by how he felt about them."

"Likely. The way that true memories are formed in our minds uses the amygdalae, hippocampus, and hypothalamus -- all of which are connected with emotion. Artificial information would have no such basis, unless the process has been much more total than I have been able to ascertain."

Steve looks out the window again as T'Challa talks; nods to himself, again and again. "But the artificial information is still in there, even if he can tell it doesn't belong."

"Yes -- as is demonstrated by the trigger itself. This information is unlikely to be as prominent as it was, and it will fade over time. But the more Barnes uses the knowledge that was placed within him while he _is_ his true self -- which is to say, capable of, or allowing himself, genuine emotion and experience -- the more he may remember the artificial information as though it were his own in the course of using it. As he creates genuine memories using the false information, it may become true information."

Steve turns to T'Challa, raising an eyebrow. "Including Hydra principles? Beliefs?"

T'Challa closes the file and gives Steve an apologetic look. "I cannot answer that. But given what we have seen from Barnes thus far, it seems he is more than capable of separating himself from what Hydra has wanted from him. He has shown a remarkable resilience in identifying his true motives among what has been implanted within him, and so I see no reason to believe that he would not doubt any principles Hydra has placed in him until he realized they did not accord and dismissed them. Bear in mind that any such principles that remain in his mind, he has never truly _felt_. If he continues to follow his heart -- unless so motivated -- there is no reason to believe that Barnes should return to proclivities of cruelty."

"Unless so motivated? What's that supposed to mean?"

"Even among the good, Captain, vengeance is among the most powerful forces of the heart."

Steve wrenches his gaze away; stares out over the jungle once again. The feeling in his gut is hardening into something distinctly familiar. "Talk to me about the trigger."

T'Challa shifts in his chair and sighs. "Let me return to the distinction between false and legitimate information. Barnes was perfectly capable of executing the skills introduced to him via artificial means, but he had to be _convinced_ to use them. In other words, unless he had _wanted_ to carry them out in the first place, they had to be linked to true information in order to annihilate his resistance to the notion. Only you can answer whether he was the kind of man who would be readily convinced to execute the orders of an assassin in the absence of additional brainwashing."

"He didn't even want to go to war," Steve bites, fury and righteousness flowing through him. "He learned how to box in his youth only for the sake of defending -- others. The stubborn and the helpless. He never wanted to hurt anyone."

"Then it seems very likely he would have resisted the process. There may have been some initial period where Barnes chose to commit the actions given the alternative of some great penalty, but if he was the man you claim he is, perhaps he may have reached a point where he would have sooner offered of himself than sacrificed the lives of others."

Had Steve not read in Bucky's Hydra file about how, captive during the war, working for the enemy had given way to becoming a subject of experimentation? "These trigger words -- trigger an artificial motive," Steve asks.

"It is not quite that." T'Challa is looking at him evenly, but Steve can't mistake the pity tinged in his gaze. "If he is a man of peace and of resilience to the degree you describe, his torturers would have most likely systematically identified the source of his resistance -- worn him down until he was forced into confession of his corest motives, then linked the control words to the very source of his humanity. If, as you say, Barnes' response to being told to kill would have been to give himself up, they would have perverted that instinct until it became to him as though there was nothing left to defend."

\-- _why in hell wouldn't they kill me instead of perverting the only good thing I've ever known--_

Steve shuts his eyes and waits for his lungs to stop burning. "So if the trigger words are anchored to -- legitimate information. Emotional information. Is that why they still work, even when he's cleared out most of the other cobwebs? Because of the -- affect connection?"

"It would seem likely. That link is also likely the result of true brainwashing -- repetition, conditioning, bound to the true information by association, to make it seem true."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that it is likely possible to undo."

Steve's eye snaps to T'Challa's. He hadn't expected such a bold admission of possibility. "Are you serious? You couldn't have led with that?"

"I wanted you to understand what the process would require before I raised your hopes. It will not be easy."

"You're not wrong."

"The trouble, Captain--"

"Steve Rogers."

"--is that wresting back out of Barnes what has been claimed by this programming _will_ be a violent process."

"I don't care."

" _He_ may care," T'Challa says, grave. "If I understand correctly, he is not a man who would want to do violence additional to what has already been done. The danger inherent in--"

"So it's dangerous," Steve interrupts, barely controlling some fury roaring in him. "I'm dangerous. Flour dust is highly combustible. I'm not about to condemn him to a lifetime of cryosleep because of some miscalculated risk--"

"You are misunderstanding me."

"--relative to letting a man sleep himself away rather than combat something that was done to him, _against_ his will--"

"If you would please listen to me--"

"--what kind of risk are we in the business of running, exactly?"

"I am trying to explain to you that the only way to allow your friend to regain control over what has been lost to him is likely to trigger the process by which he becomes the assassin, again and again, until such a time as his response becomes changed."

For a second -- as though a bomb has been dropped -- all Steve can hear is some high-pitched sound. His heart pumps blood sloggingly, arduously through his veins.

_If you have ever once cared for me at all, Steve -- don't let them do that to me again._

Steve hears himself saying, a thousand miles away -- "No."

"Captain Rogers."

"I will never put Bucky through that again."

"This is what is required in order for him never to be victimized by another. It is the cost of his freedom."

"You don't even sound that sure."

"I am sure it is the best available direction."

"Will it even _work?_ "

"It may."

"No." Steve shakes his head. "The cost is too high. I'll find another way."

"Your affection is blinding you. Try to be objective."

Steve recoils, torn between incredulous and outraged. "I _am_ being objective. I'm the only--" But Steve's voice cuts off in the middle of his sentence again, and he looks out the window until he can clear his throat. "I am the only person with a detailed scope of every facet of this situation," he tries again, "and I am not sure of the limits on what Bucky can take." That stubborn twinge, still prominent in his voice. "I think this may surpass them."

"And if it does? Is he not at a much greater loss if you allow him to languish while you search in vain for another way?"

" _In vain_?"

"The science," T'Challa says, infuriatingly even, "is indisputable. This is not only the best available opportunity, it may be the only avenue forth."

"I don't accept that."

"What do you believe lies beyond the scope of what your friend's own mind can mend? Will you move between facilities of a broken organization in the hopes that they may have made a mistake big enough to offer you respite in the form of a pill?"

Steve has to turn away, far too agitated to remain stone-faced to the brutality of truth. "I think you're missing a fairly prominent aspect of this picture, _your highness,_ and that is the fact of what Bucky has already been through. I refuse to re-traumatize him--"

"It is in the interests of _minimizing_ the harm Barnes himself may face--"

"--again and again, for the sake of what amounts to reverse-indoctrination!"

"And yet reversing this indoctrination is precisely what you set out to do, is it not?"

Steve faces him once more. "T'Challa, I am telling you this is not a tenable solution."

"Do you know for a fact that this is true for Barnes, Captain Rogers? Or is it merely true for you?"

If not for the sudden twitch in Steve's shoulders, he may not have realized how aggressive he was appearing. His mother's voice is quiet in his mind, telling him to relax his body, to unclench his fists; that this anger will not help anyone. T'Challa merely watches him as he does, as though benignly interested in the process by which he forces himself under wraps.

"Bucky asked me never to let them trigger him again," he gravels, when he feels he can.

"I believe that an element of the picture _you_ may be missing," T'Challa says, evidently aiming to calm, "is the fact that it will not be _Hydra_ triggering him. It will be you."

Steve blinks, hard. "I beg your pardon?"

"It is the fact that he cared for you that was used and weaponized against him to create the Soldier's motives. Was it not?"

Steve feels his whole form deflating. To hear it said aloud for the first time feels little different from having first read it. "How do you know that?" he asks, suddenly quiet.

"I have deduced as much."

" _How?_ "

T'Challa merely stares at him, as though to convey that nothing since he has met them has been exactly subtle. "I understand how painful it will be," he says, instead of detailing Steve's lack of discretion. "But I strongly believe the best success will be met if it is you who is speaking with him, as he endeavors to work through what has been done to him."

"So you not only want for Bucky to have his assassin programming triggered, again and again -- you want _me_ to be the one to enact this torture on him."

"It is not a matter of what I want."

"You can say that again."

"You have asked me for my opinion, and I am afraid this is it." Another smile, fragile; and this time his sympathy does not infuriate Steve but winds him down, leaving him weak, until he finally casts around for a chair to break his collapse. "You are of course welcome to seek an additional viewpoint, but if you understood what I said about how the information was likely implanted in his mind, I truly believe -- and this is supported by the evidence -- that it will take as strong a bond to break these connections as it did to form them in the first place."

Splain in his chair, Steve raises his chin. "The trigger persists because the emotional bond is too strong to break."

"Yes."

"Only a stronger--" Steve shuts his eyes. "If the fact that we cared for each other helped to form the bonds between Bucky and the trigger words in the first place, it might be the only thing powerful enough to break it."

T'Challa nods, slow. "I believe so. Yes."

When Steve opens his eyes, it's with some tired resignation. "Okay," he mutters, then forces himself to sit up straighter. "I guess the least we can do is to wake him up and ask him direct."

  



	5. Chapter 5

  
**B R O O K L Y N**  
_march 1942_   


  


It had taken Steve a moment to realize he was awake.

He'd dreamed -- or so he thought -- of Bucky climbing through a window. He used to do that all the time when they were younger: crawl into Steve's room and wake him up, bright and full of life, just to talk about nothing. Steve would sit up with him and rub at his eyes and listen until there was a break for long enough for him to find something to say; and then they'd fall asleep together, there in his bed.

They were adults now and Bucky was off at camp. Steve hadn't seen him in six months, so to think that Bucky to be _here_ \--

But Bucky really _was_ there -- sitting in a chair, wearing his uniform, unmoving, doing nothing but watching him. It was the middle of the night and he hadn't turned on a light, but Steve had known who it was just from his silhouette.

He pushed himself into a seated position, fists against the bed. "Bucky?"

"You oughta consider locking the window at night," Bucky said. He was so far away. Something was wrong with his voice, like it wasn't connected to his form. "Any old prowler could walk right in."

Steve's heart pounded so hard and so loud that he put a hand at his chest, as though trying to keep it in. "You're not a prowler. Sure acting like one, though."

"Still think you're immortal, huh?"

Bucky's hands gripped the arms of the chair, jacket thrown over one arm. Steve couldn't see his eyes through the shadows but he'd have sworn Bucky was staring at him, or through him, in some way he wouldn't like. 

"What brings you home, Bucky?" he'd asked, afraid. "You didn't mention it."

In fact neither one of them had sent a letter to the other in more than two months. "Yeah, well," Bucky'd said, as content to ignore it as Steve was. "They surprised me with that promotion. Bit premature if you ask me, but got sent home one last time anyway." He'd shrugged. "Guess my orders are coming. They didn't tell me when to come back."

Steve felt his face draining. "Oh."

"I'm staying at Ma's. I just--" There was a quality to it that made him sound suddenly honest. "I don't know, Steve. I don't know what the hell I'm doing here."

A beat passed them over. Steve wished he would come closer. "Well, they did send you home. So here you are."

"This isn't my home.” It was flat, empty; it hurt him, oh, god. "I'm busy anyhow. Plans kinda fall into place on their own these days. Might be the only time I see you."

A beat between them, stubborn and nauseating. "All right," Steve managed. "Better come to bed now, then."

Bucky raised his chin, defensive. "I'm not doing that anymore, Steve."

Steve forced a shaking smile. "This again, huh?"

"I'm gonna stick to it this time."

"Okay." He could read Bucky's face a bit now, with his eyes adjusting. "Still could've sent a letter. We're -- friends, at least. Aren't we?"

"Real fast, like I said."

A thrumming silence, devastating, filled and became them.

"So how've you been?" Bucky asked at last. "Staying out of trouble for once in your miserable life?"

Steve gave a quirk of his mouth. "How do you want me to answer that?"

"All right, well. At least tell me you're done trying to enlist."

It had teeth to it. Steve hadn't known what to say, since he hadn't stopped at all. Had Bucky come home even four days earlier, he'd have found Steve gone, having scraped together enough for a rooming house in Richmond, trying to do exactly what Bucky'd told him a million times to stop.

Bucky read the silence perfectly. "Rogers, Steven G.," he said suddenly, loudly enough that Steve started. He reached into his coat and pulled out a stack of papers. "Boston, Massachusetts."

Steve's eyes closed of their own accord. His heart beat harder, rendered him numb. "Bucky."

" _Boston_ , huh?" Bucky looked up from the enlistment forms in front of him. "Boy, you're just from all over these days."

"You won't write a letter, but you'll come all this way to read me the riot act in person?"

"4F!" Bucky continued loudly. "Asthma, heart palpitations, the stuff they could identify in an exam… selective on the family history this time, I see. That's dangerous to others as well as yourself, as you well know."

"Did you memorize that? How did you even get it, isn't it classified?"

"I'm Sergeant now, Rogers, I have ways."

"Ways to violate my privacy?"

" _Unidentified mass_!" Bucky said, picking up volume. Steve shut his eyes again. "Unidentified _mass_. That's short for Massachusetts, right? Your Massachusetts accent that doesn't exist and is therefore unidentified?"

"Bucky, listen."

He stared, hard, in that way that made Steve afraid he was about to come apart. "So it's _not_ short for Massachusetts."

"It's treated."

Bucky shook his head for longer than Steve knew how to manage. "I can't believe that after--" His voice broke. He pieced it together fast. "After all of _this_ , Steve, you don't even--"

" _I_ can't believe _you_ did _this_."

"-- lecturing me about writing letters when this is _exactly_ the kind of thing you write someone about --"

"Oh, you're right, _Bucky_. Half a year of 'weather's shit, training sucks but I short-sheeted a bed today,' and you want me to write 'hey, health scare number 527, don't worry though it's under control'?"

"Yeah! That would have been nice!"

"You know what Bucky? Go to hell."

Bucky blinked at him. " _Excuse_ me?"

"You break into my house in the middle of the night, watch me sleep until I wake up of my own volition, and all to confront me about something that fundamentally doesn't concern you. Meanwhile you act all along like we don't mean a thing to each other, so -- yeah, damn it all, and damn you too, and go straight to hell. I needed none of this today, Bucky, and I still don't, so -- good to see you, I guess. Have a nice life. See you next time you decide to be an asshole, or maybe not if you smarten up and decide to keep it to your own self next time."

Instead of admonishing him, Steve's speech seemed to leave Bucky devastated.

"Is it cancer?" Bucky asked, voice thick and wavering.

Steve felt himself sighing with sympathy. "No, Bucky, it's not cancer."

"I don't know why I should believe you."

"You're expecting a lot from me for someone who won't even come within five feet of my vicinity.”

When Bucky moved his head, the moonlight hit differently. Steve suddenly saw tear tracks shining on his face. "Tell me again you're getting it treated."

"I told you, it's done. Minor outpatient procedure for some twisted duct by my shoulder. Totally benign, no big commotion."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that. That report's from two months ago, Bucky. I'll show you the scar if you really want but I'd have to come near you to do it, and I'm guessing that's out since you seem to be done with me."

Steve could see the tremor in his chin, even in the dark; even from far away. "It's not like that. You know what I mean to say."

"I don't. You haven't said nearly anything to me for months."

"I wish it was different."

"Then make it different. Come over here."

Bucky'd taken a breath and gathered his coat in his hand. "I'm glad you're not dying, Steve. Make good on it and stop trying to enlist."

"We're all dying, Bucky. I for one would rather die for a cause."

It hit him hard. Every muscle in his body tensed where he stood, as though preventing him from leaving. Steve knew it was petty, that he was being a certain way; but it made him glad that he could at least dish back some of whatever it was Bucky was throwing at him.

"Don't say that," Bucky said.

"Come to bed or get out, Bucky. I'm tired of this."

"I can't come to bed anymore, Steve. I'm sorry. You don't know how sorry I am."

"I don't know why you're doing this to yourself. Nothing's different."

"Everything's different. It's 1942, in case you haven't noticed. Folks like us don't get the chances we used to."

"I don't care what damn year it is, I care that I--" Steve had had to pause, let the anger thrum through him. "I don't want to fight you," he muttered a second later.

"I don't want to fight you, either."

"So you won't stay. Fine. Will you at least make more time for me before you get deployed?"

"I don't think that's such a good idea."

"Why _not_? I'm just asking for a drink!"

A break in Bucky's throat, echoing Steve's. "I'm busy, like I said. Got a date tomorrow night."

"Night after that, then."

"Might be too late."

"What, orders come that fast?"

"We're at war, Steve. Aren't you the one always telling me that?"

Steve stared at him. 

"Listen, all right," Bucky said after a moment. "You should come too, tomorrow, on the date. I'll find you a dame."

"What? Bucky. I don't want--"

"Gotta maintain appearances. You know how rumours are."

"Bucky," Steve said, another desperate break to it. "What _happened_ to you?"

"I got realistic. Started paying attention."

"I don't accept that."

"Well, take or or leave it. We don't have to see each other again."

It was blackmail, but god help him, it was working. Steve wanted to _fight,_ he wanted to scream, he wanted to get fucked into the bed, but instead -- "Come closer, Bucky, please. Just for a minute."

"Stop asking me to."

"You don't have a date tonight, do you?"

"I'm sorry. I can't do this. I gotta go."

That time Bucky did move toward the door -- some rigid soldier's march, hand clasped around his coat -- and Steve was prepared to let him just walk out until Bucky stopped and turned slowly back.

"See you tomorrow?" he said -- quiet. Plaintive.

"I don't fancy ranking second with you, Buck." Emotion was rising in him. Steve hated himself for it. "I really, really don't. You're asking me to watch you treat some dame like she's what you want and then do the same myself. Those girls don't deserve that, and neither do I."

A thick tension. Bucky'd swallowed through it. "We can't leave things like this, Steve. We can't have this be the last conversation we ever have."

"It's not gonna be the last conversation we ever have, you mook."

"I get deployed, then what?" He shrugged. "We're all dying, right?"

Steve's hand clenched in the sheets. "Bucky, _stop._ "

"Come tomorrow anyway." He'd turned his head again, moonlight catching his silhouette. "Let's be friends, Rogers, for just a night. Hate me all you want after that for all I care, but I can't--"

His throat had closed off, his head had bowed; and Steve remembered with sudden, debilitating force that there was nothing on the earth he wouldn't do for Bucky Barnes.

"Yeah," Steve sighed, and looked to the ceiling. "Fine, Bucky. I'll see you tomorrow."

He took a steadying breath, slow and deep. "Thank you." 

Then, steeling himself, straightening his back into that soldier's posture, Bucky left Steve behind.

The next night they'd gone to Stark Expo, and the rest, as they say, was history.

  


  


  


  
**B A R G A I N I N G**  
_ december 2016 _  


  


It takes Bucky a minute to realize he's awake.

Steve watches as Bucky stares, motionless, emptily into the room. Steve stays a good twenty feet away; shoves his hands in his pockets, where they're clenched into fists, trying desperately to look casual. He tries to rearrange his features, wanting to look as neutral as possible. He just can't shake the pinch of his brow or the tug of his cheeks, or the way his mouth pushes against itself as though to make itself small.

When Bucky does start to blink -- start to rouse himself; to understand where he is -- it is still some time after that before his gaze finds Steve.

Bucky looks suspicious, at first. It is a long time before he speaks.

"Hey," he says, hoarse.

Steve smiles, only then -- hesitant and hopeful. "Hey."

Bucky raises a hand and rubs furiously at his eyes. When he shambles out from the pod, it is with his arm propped behind him, fingers scanning along its back. Steve fights not to step forward to help. "How long has it been?" Bucky asks.

"A little under six months."

He nods, his mouth tight. "You're not done."

From the look on Bucky's face in the beat that follows, Steve can see he hasn't succeeded in his aim for neutrality. Bucky stares at him. Steve can nearly see the dread pulsing through his system as though it's replaced his blood.

"Are you hungry?" Steve steps back to gesture at some table against the far wall. "I picked up some chicken. I don't know… you're not vegetarian, are you?" He winces. "I ate beef jerky in your house, of course you're not. People are, these days, it's smart to ask, but I guess…"

Something softens in Bucky's face. "Relax," he mutters, giving him the once-over.

Steve exhales, his shoulders collapsing from where they'd climbed high on his neck. "Sorry."

"What are you worried about?"

"I don't know."

"Give me five minutes to adjust before falling apart on me, would you? Sit down, breathe into a bag or something."

Steve opens his mouth to reply, but his heart is beating too hard and the only thing he manages is a shaky smile. 

_Bucky_ \-- still here in front of him, after six months or three generations. He hadn't realized he'd been fearing a different outcome. 

Steve sits down, hoping to retain some shred of sanity. Bucky follows suit, looking pale and nauseous and still a bit suspicious. 

"Nice beard," Bucky mutters, to soothe them both.

"Thanks," Steve says. He clears his throat. "Grew it myself."

"Cover?"

"Retired. Seemed as good a time as any."

Bucky takes this in stride. "Looks good."

"I like yours too. Meant to tell you." Steve knows what he sounds like -- fond, relieved.

"Not sure it's a beard so much as it is a committed failure to shave."

"That's a beard by definition."

"Hm." Bucky's eyes flicker shut, hand loose in his lap where he's leaned his body against the wall. 

Steve's good mood falls immediately away. He looks so, so pale. "Are you--" He lets out a slow exhale when his voice drags against resistance. "Is waking up -- hard?"

"Guess it must be," Bucky mutters. "Never been myself on the other side before. I've… gotta be sedated, or something. This isn't right, everything's surreal."

Steve nods and finds it in him to stay where he is. "They gave you something that was supposed to reverse the sedative's effects. Said it might not be total."

"Okay. Give me a minute."

"Take your time."

Steve waits with him, just watching for the violent flex of his jaw to die down. Bucky swallows before he looks at him, minutes or hours later. "You didn't find anything, then," he guesses, forcing himself up into a seated position.

A beat passes. Steve had expected more of a lead-in. "You should eat something."

"Steve."

"I mean it. You've been pumped full of chemicals, food can only help. There's broth over there if you're not up to solid foods."

"Now that I'm awake you're gonna henpeck me to death?"

"I'm not henpecking. I'm making sure you don't die before you get a life."

Bucky stares at him, bleary and cynical. Steve waits, as though hoping the mood will change on its own.

"Yeah, Buck," he says at long last. "I have something. But you're not gonna like it."

Bucky takes this with measured breaths. Eventually, he reaches for the nearest takeout box with fumbling fingers. "You said chicken?" he mutters.

"Yeah. I hope that's -- whatever."

Bucky peers up at him as he reaches for a plastic fork. "And you're -- all right? In general?"

"I'm fine," Steve says. "I'm great."

Bucky blinks. "Romanov taught you basic Russian, but she never taught you how to lie?"

"I'm just--" He shakes his head and takes a steadying breath. "It's a lot."

"That bad, huh?"

"I wouldn't have woken you if it was simple."

Bucky nods down at his food. "Give me the short version, Rogers. Not much for suspense."

The breath Steve tries to take is steadying, but it staggers out of him instead. He looks away, furious with himself for not keeping it together. "There's--" Already a failure of his throat; he tries again. "We found the book. From Hydra. With the trigger words. Or Natasha did."

Bucky's whole face has changed. He nods, slight and slow. "Okay."

"And -- you were right. About what they tied them to."

Bucky swallows. "You."

Steve nods; looks at his hands. "Yeah."

"And you're here," Bucky says slowly, "alone, in a building bursting with Dora Milaje, _and_ you're upset, so… someone probably thinks you're the best shot to override the trigger words."

Steve gives an incredulous, anxiety-filled huff of laughter. "You figure that out just like that?"

Bucky stabs angrily at his salad with a plastic fork. "So, what, you're supposed to read them to me and see if I react differently when it's you who's reading them?"

"No."

"Good. That's not going to work."

"I know." The premise is unspoken, but they both hear it anyway: _You'd only try to kill me._

Bucky drops the fork into the container and leans his head into his hand. He's trying to hide, Steve knows. 

"Why did you come back?" Bucky says, voice made low by undeserved shame.

Steve thinks for something more to say, he really does, but there aren't words to cover it. "Because," he says, and then doesn't say more.

"'Because' doesn't goddamn apply anymore."

"Yes it does."

A ripple of fury passes out of Bucky; drapes over Steve like a woolen shawl. "You that eager to get to dying by my hand?"

"You're not gonna kill me, Bucky."

"How do you know that?"

"Because you don't want to."

"That's not enough. The programming--"

"It's enough for me," Steve cuts in. "I read your journals enough to trust you. I want to help you, and I'm here to do it. I'm not leaving you, Bucky. Not unless you tell me to go."

Bucky looks up at him, finally, breath heaving in his chest. "Wanting to fight this," he says, voice unsteady, "and knowing how, are two different things."

"Not in question. That's why you're not gonna do it alone."

"Wanting to fight this and doing it _safely_ are two different things."

"There is no safe way about it. You've been put in an unsafe position. It was never goddamned safe for you to follow me into those alleys either, so let me carry some of this burden now."

Bucky looks on, mouth pressed into the smallest of lines, brought to silence by Steve's severity. His hand is clenched into a fist on the table. "I don't want to do this," he gravels, and swallows when his voice disappears. "I don't want to do this -- to you."

"I don't blame you." Steve looks at where his hand is rested and thinks about reaching out; he gets halfway there before closing his fist in on itself, instead, made rigid by restraint. "But this -- doing it here, with me to help you, one last time -- may be how we make sure you never have to go through it again. We'll both come out the other side okay, Bucky. We have to." He cracks a false smile out of cemented skin. "You know how stubborn I get."

Except for the steady grind of his teeth, Bucky doesn't move for a long, long time. "Three days ago you had a real hard time even _hearing_ about what I've lived, Steve."

Steve blinks at him. All at once he registers that Bucky only went to sleep with Steve standing beside him to wake up as though seconds later; as though he'd never left, as though nothing had changed, except for the appearance of hair on his face. 

He leans hard on his elbows. "Oh."

"What a difference six months make, I guess."

Steve sighs and nods at the table. "I guess I've had time to adjust to the reality of your life."

"You know I manipulated you into this."

He frowns. "I don't think that's what happened."

"You didn't want this. You argued for hours."

" _One_ hour, maybe."

"A _long time_ , Steve."

"Well any idiot can see you're angling to start up again now, so let me save us some time and get to the point." He leans back in his chair and crosses his arms and prays that Bucky responds to his tone. "You asked for my help. Instead of a solution to the problem, I located the problem itself. You're afraid of that. I understand. It's a tough damn pill to swallow and I wish it was different. I wish more than anything, Bucky, that it was as easy as saying all we needed to do was zap a few connections in your head to make you feel free to live again. But -- that's not the way it is. We have to work for it."

"And if I reject this? If I tell you to leave?"

"That's your prerogative. But I have to point out that you _chose_ to go back into the ice because you needed _help._ "

"Don't _crucify_ me for--"

"I'm not. I'm trying to say that this is the help I can offer you." Steve taps his fingers hard down on the table. "I don't have a better solution for you than this. I wish that I did, but I don't. Of course you're welcome to go off and find your own, but you told me you couldn't do that." Steve gestures wildly at nothing. "The help you asked me for? This is what it comes to. This is what I can actually do for you, Bucky. I'm telling you I want to do it, and I hope that you let me. But it's up to you if you want to accept."

Bucky seems to swallow against whatever it is in his mouth that's making his lips curl this way. "What -- did you actually do?" he asks.

"Bucky."

"I'm not interrogating you. I have a right to know. You said it was Romanov who found the book?"

Steve forces his shoulders to relax. "Yeah. I -- followed your leads. Wound up back in Moscow, went to your address for Karpov."

Bucky stares at him, breathing hard. "Then I was on the right track."

"Seems that way. Found his records, walled off in the apartment, all in Russian. Natasha read over them, but I woke up to find her gone and the book on the table. When it became obvious that the book was the closest thing we were going to find to information on your trigger, I came back here to T'Challa to consult."

He rubs at his eyes. "Still have the records?"

"Yeah. I've skimmed them using my translator but I'm willing to bet there's a lot I'm missing."

"Follow up on Karpov?"

"Barton says he's dead in Cleveland."

His face flashes confusion. "Ohio?"

"He went there following some lead, but Zemo tracked him somehow."

Bucky nods slowly, clenching his jaw, looking off into some faraway place. "Book's red, black star?"

"Yeah."

"Zemo had it, Karpov before him."

"Yeah. Karpov was your…" Steve trails off, hesitant to finish.

Bucky fills in the blank. He nods and looks to the side again. It takes Steve a second, but he realizes he's looking at the cryopod out of the corner of his eye. "And you think just the key will be enough," he gravels, facing Steve again.

"I -- hope it." Steve offers him half a smile. "I don't think it's ridiculous to believe it might."

Bucky collapses back in his chair, looking more tired than Steve's ever seen. "I was right there."

"I think it's good you didn't find it."

"The fuck does _that_ mean?"

Steve shakes his head, regretting his wording. "You did so much on your own, but that doesn't mean you -- had to." Another flickering smile as he bites back the words that want to follow. "You don't have to take this on alone anymore, Bucky."

Bucky doesn't have anything to say to that. His fingers fiddle loosely with the lid for his food.

"You want some time?" Steve asks him.

"No," Bucky says. He looks up. "We can try this."

Steve blinks his surprise. "Yeah?"

"You get hurt, Steve." He shakes his head at the table, as though disbelieving in his own assent. "And we're done."

"I say when I'm done," Steve counters gently.

"No."

"Listen. You didn't get to decide whether I enlisted--"

"Oh, come on." 

"--and I didn't get to decide whether you went into cryosleep."

"You'd force me into this?"

"Never." His voice is low, guttural, and Steve can see Bucky knows its meaning by the look on his face. "I will never force you into anything, Bucky. But if you opt out of this, it's because _you_ don't want to pursue this course of action anymore. Allow me the same dignity."

Bucky stares -- a piercing, thrumming thing. "You've seen the trigger words?" he mutters.

"Yeah."

"You know what they're -- about?"

"In a specific sense? Some of them."

"Can you, um…" He grabs his fork and starts stabbing at his food again, just for something to do. "Do you have an example?"

Steve breathes, a minute, as though trying to remember what it's like to still know how. "The night on the fire escape," he says at last.

When he looks up, Bucky's staring at him. There's a glint in his eyes that makes Steve think he's combatting physical pain. "That -- makes sense," he manages.

"Does it?"

A shake in his chin; a fluttering blink. "That one was hard to get back."

Steve nods, suddenly absent anything to say. "I guess I'll ask you about that later."

Bucky abruptly pushes aside the container with the chicken and opts instead for the broth sitting by the wall. "So the plan is what?" he asks, fumbling with the lid. Steve watches patiently until Bucky shoves the container furiously towards him, too devastated to manage it with one hand. "We keep discussing the past until I start trying to rip your throat out and then… what, workshop?"

"We identify the memories and -- basically try to remap the brainwashing that's tied them to the Soldier information back to the actual information they're linked to." He gestures. "Like you seem to have done with the fire escape memory. Talking it through, trial and error. No throat-tearing."

He pokes miserably at the broth. "Sounds equally fucking abysmal."

It's not that it's funny and it twists in his gut, but Steve smiles anyway, helpless to do anything else. Bucky seems to breathe a little easier to see it, and they let it spread between them for a minute; let it ratchet their anxiety down, a little.

"So you know something about how this mechanism works," Bucky asks him.

"Theories," says Steve. "Natasha says Hydra's primary form of brainwashing is something called the Faustus method. We have some information on what that amounts to, but she's a little tight-lipped on specifics."

Bucky's gaze wanders slowly to the floor. "I can tell you a bit about it."

Steve knows in an instant he isn't ready for that. He hastens to cover. "They probably used it to tie Winter Soldier instincts to memories about me. You think of me, brainwashing tells you I'm the enemy. Behavioral mandates get triggered, information streams through your head, telling you to obey orders and destroy everything between you and the target. They -- mistook you for a computer, Bucky. They tried to get you to act like one, semi-successfully, just by creating some kind of translation protocol. They took your emotional response from the memories and attached it automatically to a kill directive." 

He watches Bucky while he talks, careful to stop at the first sign of trouble, but it seems as though Steve is just confirming what Bucky already suspected. "Not quite," Bucky says through tight lips.

Steve blinks. "Oh?"

"It's not that you're the target. It's that you're responsible."

"Responsible? For what?"

"For the world and its wrongness. Except for when they've told me directly to kill Steve Rogers, I've never had a direct mission to kill _you_. Just what you represent."

"So when the Soldier's mandate has been activated…"

"I'm fighting you, your allies, S.H.I.E.L.D. -- anyone who poses a threat to Hydra. I never have a specific order; just a general principle. It's just tied to… memories of you. Because you're the face of all that."

There's something withdrawn in the line of Bucky's mouth. Steve is terrified of all he's not telling him. "I'm the face of what is -- not Hydra."

"Yes," Bucky says shortly.

Steve wrenches his gaze away and intertwines his own hands, flexing at his fingers. "Well, it looks like they're linked to memories of me regardless. T'Challa thinks they tried to bury the memories _themselves_ under a lot of psychological noise, so they're hard for you to access without prompting. That's what I'm here for -- to help navigate through that resistance. Theoretically, we find the memories the words are linked to, unearth them, work until they aren't linked to that kill directive anymore, and you're... done." He almost says _free_ , but catches himself in time.

" _Theoretically._ "

"Theoretically," Steve confirms, smiling tightly. "Nothing's confirmed, but that doesn't mean we don't have a good angle going forward. It's a shot, Bucky, and a good one."

Bucky stares at him a while longer, then, eyelids flickering, he takes in a tight, aborted breath. "Steve," he says shortly.

"Yeah."

"I'll do this." He forces more breath into his lungs, and it is a struggle; Steve had mistaken dread for certainty. "You want to sit here with me in this prison and jog these memories, let me get violent with the aim of helping me -- fine. I don't have a better alternative. But I do have conditions."

"Okay," Steve says readily. "Name 'em."

"First is that we create a scenario with failsafes. I get out of control, you subdue me, _fast._ This protects me as much as you. I won't kill again. Not you, not anyone."

Steve nods. "Okay."

"Second--" His voice breaks; he looks away. "I don't want to cause you harm, but I'm thinking I probably will. I'm gonna struggle with that. If and when that happens -- if you decide to stay in spite of it -- you can't just... talk me away from feeling bad." He swallows. "Let me live and survive on my terms, Steve. Let me get through it the way I know how."

"Okay," Steve agrees, soft.

"And I don't -- want Captain America." He looks up, clear. "I don't want to be your _mission._ You wanna help me, help me, but I need -- Steve. Not another handler." He raises his chin in defiance. "I'd rather do it myself than be treated like your _business._ "

Steve wonders what Bucky sees to look at him, to think he could ever do such a thing. All the time they spent together in the war, and Steve had barely stopped being Captain America, and in all the time since then it's more of the same. Steve may have stopped thinking of himself as Captain America, but that doesn't mean Bucky sees it.

He still can't reach out, as though still inhibited by some invisible force, but he wends his ankle around Bucky's under the table. "Bucky," he says. His face cracks into that terrible smile, the sad one everyone scorns. "You know why I'm here."

Bucky looks at him, still beyond pale. "Because you're the only one who'd risk their neck for me."

It breaks his heart, a little, but it's barely a flicker on his face. "Well, it's not because you're my business."

Bucky holds his gaze a second, then looks at the table and starts in again on his food.

Steve wants nothing more than to take that sadness bodily out of him and to reduce it to ash.

  


  


  


It takes a long time for the sedative to wear off completely. They make nothing small talk waiting for Bucky's colour to come back, but it never does, even with food. He submits, if glaringly, to a test of his blood pressure by a nurse who comes to check on him, and after waving a pen in front of his eyes and checking his pulse the nurse suggests that the extra sedative it had taken to put Bucky under in the first place was taking its time in clearing out of his system.

"Time helps all and heals much," the nurse tells them evenly. 

Bucky meets Steve's eye and then casts away again, and neither of them says a thing.

They wander around the guest wing, Bucky's arm draped over Steve's shoulder. His feet drag. Steve tells him about the last six months. He talks about breaking the others out of the Raft, about Wanda and Clint and Scott heading back to the States; about how Sharon figured out how to get Sam his wings back before she'd gone quiet. He talks about Natasha's secret mission, about how Sam's spending a lot more time with her after the Raft. How Steve doesn't blame him a bit.

"Been using your safehouses," Steve tells him. "Followed along with your journals, where I could. Saw Europe from your point of view. It was nice."

"Nice," Bucky grunts. "You sure they were _my_ safehouses?"

Steve gives a wan smile. "It was just nice to see where you… were. How you lived." This time when Steve looks over, he sees Bucky's eyes closed, a pulse at his jaw where he's locked it shut. "How you doing?"

"I'm sure motility is good for me post-cryo, but I wouldn't mind lying down."

Steve nods and makes an immediate diversion toward the bedrooms. "Didn't make near the dent in your paperback collection that you did."

"Lack dedication."

Steve gives a breath of laughter. "Yeah. _That's_ my problem."

"Couldn't read in a quarter of the time what took me two years? You call yourself a superhero."

Steve smiles. "Not anymore, Buck."

Bucky doesn't say anything to that.

Steve hesitates a moment looking at the door before entering the room beside his own. He stoops to let Bucky collapse onto the bed, then stares a moment as Bucky unfurls, unsure where to put himself, feeling it awkward to leave. 

Bucky blinks in the face of Steve's indecision and flits his gaze to the other side of the bed. "C'mere," he says, and Steve smiles his relief and moves to the other side of the bed. 

He stretches out, one arm resting under his own head, watching as Bucky steadies his breathing and wears down the edge of exertion. As Bucky's fist loosens gradually by his side, Steve takes a risk and intertwines their fingers, working against his palm until they're flush together. He's relieved when Bucky squeezes his hand back, as though grateful he's there. 

"So you're not Captain America these days," he murmurs eventually, just when Steve thinks he's close to sleep.

Steve cracks a wry smile. "Don't get any ideas. I was already close to quitting the Avengers when you showed up."

"Is that wise?"

"Is it… wise? I don't know. Is that relevant?"

"Have you thought this through?"

He hadn't expected pushback. "I'm ready for this war to finally end," he says. "I'm pretty sure it can't if I'm still fighting in it."

Bucky peels his eyes open. "Well, that's the thing about war, Steve."

"I know, I know." He doesn't want Bucky to say it.

"You know it doesn't hinge on you either way. You keep acting like you're the arbiter of..."

There's a wrongness to it, a sense of crossed streams. As it sours in Steve's gut, so it seems to in Bucky's mouth.

"Well, maybe I'm just the same idiot I always was," Steve tells him.

"That's what I'm saying."

"Maybe I'm thinking you're the same kind of idiot."

Bucky seems to have no reply. "I wish you'd keep an open mind," he says at last. "That's all."

"Are you really concerned?"

"Seems self-sacrificial."

"Captain America was self-sacrificial."

"Well, I always said that too."

"So you're just angling to be right, here."

A hint of a smile. "That's all I'm ever trying to do, Rogers."

Steve shuts his eyes against the flood of adoration and hopes Bucky can't feel his heart beating through his arm.

"This your room?" Bucky asks him.

"No," Steve says, and clears his throat against the strain in it. "Figured you'd want your own. I can go whenever you want."

"Kinda wanna sleep this off. Hate this sedative."

"You got it." 

He moves to leave, but Bucky catches his wrist before he can get up. "I don't trust myself to wake up," he mutters, eyes closed, mouth tight, "in the event of attack. It's, um -- you don't have to, but--"

He doesn't need to say any more. Steve takes Bucky's hand back in his and lies down again, and Bucky's breath evens out with relief, sleep taking him within the minute. 

Steve watches him a while, just allowing himself this; lets the hurricane rage on.

He doesn't move a muscle until sleep takes him too.

  


  


  


  
**A N G E R**  
_december 2016_

  


"Don't you want to -- I dunno -- adjust to the fact that six months have passed _at all_?"

Bucky stares at him. "No."

It's the third time they've had this conversation in three hours. The first had been the longer version, the more necessary one, with Steve suggesting they spend a calmer morning -- read the paper, maybe watch a movie, try to find equilibrium.

Bucky had tolerated his ramblings for nearly a full minute before barking his name out so harsh it had nearly made Steve jump. "Why are you pretending everything's normal?" 

"Because I--" Steve had clenched his teeth to stop from saying what was really on his mind. "You want -- to live."

"Yeah. _Without_ the programming that turns me into an assassin."

"Okay, but--"

"So let's get it out of me. No delays. I don't want to live with this longer than I have to."

"Bucky, I just think--"

"Steve. We make -- our own -- decisions."

"Okay, but can we -- _consider_ alternatives to moving full-tilt on this at all times? You said yourself you don't want to do only this--"

"Breaks. Not delays."

"--and you just woke up from six months of cryosleep--"

"Not unusual in my recent life experience, Rogers."

"--in the past _week_ of your recent memory, your entire existence has been upended, _six months,_ Bucky--"

"And now I want to get back to where I left off before you showed up in my goddamn apartment. This is how we're doing this. You're helping me, not handling me. If I want to do something else you'll be the first to know."

Steve took a steadying sigh. "Okay." He let the terror wrack through him for five solid seconds. "We'll start after breakfast. Just -- do me a favour and… eat. Breakfast. First."

Bucky had glowered at him with every single spoonful of the oatmeal he subsequently ate, and he had not tolerated any renewed negotiation attempt when one of T'Challa's employees had come in to tell them the room Bucky'd specified was ready for them -- nor is he tolerating it now that they're already sitting in it. But after six months -- after spending the last three weeks in Wakanda, doing nothing but preparing for this -- Steve finds, now that he's here, that he's still not ready for this. 

He makes one last-ditch effort at negotiating himself a delay. "Don't you want to consider... maybe getting fitted for a new prosthetic?" He hears the desperation in his tone and swallows it down. "T'Challa's made up a few designs. You could look at them, see which ones--"

"No."

"You would feel more protected."

"I would strangle you to death."

It's then that Steve registers that Bucky's looking already haggard, fingers grasped over his knee, white with tension. For Steve to push back -- as though he doesn't now want to do this after all -- is cruel and unusual. He knows that it's on him to start this. He just hasn't the slightest idea how.

"Put me out of my misery, Rogers," Bucky says. "Or get out and let me do this myself."

Steve takes a steeling breath. "Okay. Okay." He swallows; finds ground. "I need -- information. Before we try to dig up new stuff."

"Fine," Bucky says. There's an edge off his tone to have even made it this far. "What kind?"

"I need to ask you about the--" He falters, already. "The -- day on the fire escape. How you got that memory back."

"What do you want to know?"

They'd both known this question was coming, but they still don't seem to know how to react. "What... did you do?"

It's a useless question, Steve knows, but it's the only one they have. "It's -- not that easy."

"Okay." Steve waits for more, but there isn't any. "Why?"

Something's happened in Bucky's eyes when he looks up, like he's been brought forcefully into the present only now. "Other memories… happen to me." He swallows around a grimace and pushes on, leaning over his knee. "Something reminds me of something else in the -- fog, or whatever, and I'll think -- 'I know that. What is it?' And the details fall into place until I remember. Sometimes it's physical. Things happen to me, internally, externally, whatever. You were there when I remembered… getting my arm replaced."

Steve nods.

"That was on the intense end of my reactions. But I don't usually have to fight just to remember those memories exist, the way I did with -- the fire escape."

He only narrowly avoided saying _falling in love with you,_ and Steve knows it, because that's what he'd thought to hear. "Can you describe what you mean by 'fighting for it'?"

Bucky looks away, mouth pressing into that thin line. "You read the journals."

"Most of them."

"You get that far?"

"I did. I don't know how much you remember about what you wrote down. The process wasn't detailed."

Bucky looks down at his hand; opens it against his knee, then closes it again, as though the motion calms him. "This is gonna get heavy," Bucky says.

"Yeah," Steve agrees.

"I understand why you -- wanted to wait. You can pull the plug if you want."

"I don't plan to."

Bucky nods and looks away again, as though he can't explain himself while looking at Steve. "For a long time after we met in D.C., I wasn't -- myself. I spent a while in the US trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I was so brainwashed that I was concerned about the repercussions of the fact that I didn't kill you -- that I didn't let you die. That I pulled you out of that fucking river." 

He falls into silence; looks off to the corner of the room. Steve can't tell if he's pausing for his benefit or for Bucky's own. "I understood that you were my mission without understanding why. That hadn't happened to me in a while -- questions hadn't, I mean. It confused me enough that I couldn't commit either way: not to killing you, not to letting you live. I knew you were hurt pretty bad and found out what hospital you landed in and figured it'd be pretty easy to finish the mission if I wanted to kill you at a later time, but I didn't have a handler. It was the first time in years I didn't have someone telling me what to do, and in the absence of orders I was basically useless. I wasn't behaving like an assassin, which opened the question of what... else... I could be. I couldn't commit to staying or going, I couldn't commit to killing you or allowing you to live. I didn't know anything except that I had once been instructed to kill you, and that I also, absolutely, did not want to."

Steve's heart pounds. He hadn't once thought before now that Bucky would've come for him again after S.H.I.E.L.D.'s collapse, but that had been his naivete, good sense lost to insomnia and apathy. The Avengers had likely been keeping an eye on him the whole time. Why else would Sam have broken into his apartment when he stopped showing up?

"So I located additional intel," Bucky continues. "Found your exhibit in the Smithsonian. Saw myself there, though it didn't connect at the time that it was me. It looked like the Asset on the wall, and I was the Asset, but it said James Barnes, and then -- I remembered. What it was describing, it all fell into place -- being at war with you, growing up with you, or patches of it. It _happened_ to me, standing there, and once I remembered all that, I remembered immediately after that you were supposed to be the enemy. Like an equivalent thought. I opposed you, what you stood for, what I was remembering -- all of it. And for a long time after that, every time I started to think that I might want you to live, I remembered like a reflex why I was supposed to want you to die.

"So I got to the bottom of it. I worked through some shit until I could think of you without fighting the instruction to kill you at all. You just were Steve Rogers, and there was more to it than that, but I'd at least decided you could live. And once I did that I had no reason to stay.

"So I left the country. Maybe to protect you, or maybe... everyone. I decided sometime on the boat that I was the James Buchanan Barnes on the memorial." They're a long way from DC, but he gestures as though it was next door. "It took a while to stick but it was a good start. Started to become a person without a handler. Started respecting independent thought, respecting the fact that I'd _decided_ to leave, to learn not to want you dead, of my own volition, with no one telling me what to do. I went to Moscow because all my thoughts were still in Russian and I thought that'd be easiest. I was still afraid to speak aloud. I thought Russian would trigger something that made me the Soldier but I didn't know what else to do. Spent the whole train ride across the continent muttering words to myself and waiting for the kill command to hit me again, but it never did. Memories kept floating to the top as time went on, I ate something other than protein bars, I started to accept that the things I remembered might be real. That I really did know you all those years ago, that we grew up together, that we--"

He cuts off, here, finally; moves his face away, as though still pained by the juxtaposition. Steve can imagine what he'd been about to say. "But it wasn't complete. Things were missing, big things. I…" His face falls. "I could remember the first time we kissed but not why. I knew how I felt about you but not how it started. So through the months that followed I filtered through what I was remembering, trying to get to the source of it. Because the same thing that made me want you to be alive also seemed to be responsible for the information telling me to eliminate you. I had to figure that out."

Steve nods, suddenly. He hadn't known where Bucky was going with this but he understands now. "Then you remembered the fire escape."

Bucky nods, too, staring at the floor. "I'd get a flicker, and the Soldier would--" He gestures at his head. "Wake up, or whatever. I had enough of myself back by then that it never really -- took hold, but I didn't understand any of it. I was convinced I needed this memory, worked through it constantly, couldn't let it rest. I'd get a sliver of something -- the way the moon hit half your face, or the way you scared the shit out of me when you woke up -- and register: _Enemy target. Steven Grant Rogers, date of birth, last known location._ " He raises a shaking hand and presses it to his temple, as though it's happening even now. "Instructions, orders. Months without a handler just for that to start up again."

He looks at Steve as though gauging his response. Judging by the look on Bucky's face, Steve must show the placid calm he feels without the accompanying steel rage. 

"I'm with you," Steve mutters.

"Always took a while, but the orders would die. Never took me over to the point of commanding action. I'd get sick -- black out, recover, not remember what caused it in the first place, then realize I still couldn't remember when I started caring about you or why I wanted to kill you. Tried to remember again, started the whole process over. Rinse, repeat."

"Until it stopped."

"Yeah. Things got intense for a while. I didn't leave the house much. Carved shit into the walls, wrote it on my arm, repeated over and over in Russian, English, any language, fucking Mandarin if that's what it took, what it was I was trying to remember. And eventually I understood the reference I was trying to force on myself. Caught myself in some loop: remember, endure programming, black out, wake up, see reminder, remember, black out again. But at some point I stopped blacking out, and then I stopped forgetting."

Steve slides a preventative hand over his mouth. "Jesus, Bucky."

He looks askance, awkward. "It -- sounds worse than it was."

It's an utter lie, flagrant and bald. Steve can't stop the dry laughter from bubbling forth in incredulity. 

The clench of his jaw suggests an intentional joke, as though just to get a reaction out of Steve that isn't this. "Sorry," Bucky mutters. He leans hard on his arm where it's braced at his knee and looks to the floor, and Steve watches as the tension fills him in anticipation of what he's about to say. "I hunted that memory," he says, after a time, looking up. "I needed it, so I pushed until I did it. But I knew -- I think I knew it wasn't the only one. It's just that after -- all that, I stopped pushing." A break in his voice. "I was more myself but worse off for it. Started showing new symptoms. I got -- afraid." He meets Steve's eye. "Berlin didn't need to happen."

Steve blinks, dumbfounded, sure he's misunderstood. "You couldn't have pushed any harder than you did, Buck."

"I could've. I didn't."

" _Bucky_. Come on. It would have killed you." 

"Maybe. But it would've been--"

"Destruction," Steve cuts in. "You can't do _all_ of this alone."

Bucky swallows against something deeply physical. "It would have been my own."

Steve stops his reply before it starts; shuts his eyes tight, purses his lips, clenches every hot part of him. "I get why that's important to you," he grinds out. "But those aren't the circumstances you're in now."

Bucky stares at him until Steve's nostrils stop flaring. "I didn't know the Soldier could be triggered like that," he says at last, made quiet by control. "I thought -- it couldn't happen again. So I stopped pressing, out of fear. That doesn't make this your responsibility, Steve--"

"Oh, come _on_."

"--just because I wasn't strong enough."

"I will tell you again and again and a thousand times if that's what it takes," Steve gravels, fierce. "I'm not here because you're _not strong enough_. I'm here because you don't have to do this by yourself. This isn't your fault."

"Don't get angry."

" _Bucky._ " He swallows hard, furious. "I have never been less angry in my _life_."

Bucky's mouth twitches. Maybe it's a relief to both of them that they're each in the habit of lying just to persevere. 

"Steady, Rogers," Bucky says softly to his hand. "I don't want to find you bloodied in some Wakandan alley."

"Please," Steve scoffs. "I win my fights now."

"Oh, yeah? Let's recap."

"Let's not."

"Couldn't beat me. Couldn't beat Stark--"

"I beat you both, actually. Let's check -- is Stark here? No. And I surrendered with you, that's not losing."

Bucky's distracted amusement flickers away. Steve's does the same to see it.

"Did you really?" he asks, voice low. 

Steve shrugs. "Yeah." 

"That was dumb."

"Okay."

"You would have died."

"I figured that going in."

Bucky's breath grows sharper on the inhale. "What is this? You telling me you had a death wish?" 

"I had a death -- _conviction._ Different thing."

" _How_ is that _different_?"

"Bucky," Steve says shortly. "I'd been conscious for two years and I had no idea why. Then you showed up. I didn't understand a single thing about why I was back until that day. It came to a head the second I saw your face in the middle of that street. I can't explain to you my thought process, but I--" He coughs out a laugh, resigned, and looks off and away. "I'd have sworn it was some kind of providence."

"Oh, _Christ._ How many years has it been since you've been Catholic?"

Steve gives a thin smile and doesn't say anything.

"Jesus." 

"Well, let's not do this now."

"No, I think we have to. Is that why you're here _now_?"

Steve hesitates. "No," he says eventually, and it's something like the truth. "I -- got lost," he says, and he has to smile against the lump in his throat. "For a long time. You died and I lost track."

"Don't put this on me."

"I'm not trying to." He shrugs. "I'm sorry. But I think that's what it comes down to. We were supposed to survive the war--"

"We were _never_ supposed to survive the war."

" _In my mind,_ we were supposed to survive the war. That was the whole point, Buck. I would never have pursued enlistment so aggressively if you hadn't gotten drafted."

"Jesus _fucking_ Christ," he bites, leaning back in his chair.

"It was always about bringing you home. I misfired. I admit that. None of this would've happened if I hadn't--"

"Are you out of your mind? You think this," he gestures at himself, "is on _you_? Is _that_ why you're here?"

"No. I'm here because--"

"Of _providence_?"

Steve blinks at him, arms crossed gently over his chest. "Aren't you?" he asks, quiet.

Bucky shakes his head, very slowly. "No, Steve. I'm here as the result of experimentation, indoctrination. Artificial preservation -- _and so are you_ , by the way--"

"You don't think we're here for a reason?"

From the way Bucky's looking at him, Steve might guess he's being pitied. "I have never believed anything more strongly than the fact that I am here for no good reason at all."

Steve waits to speak again until he's found somewhere to store this information. He tucks it into the very heart of him, with all its venom and truth. "Okay, Bucky," he says softly. "Yeah. I walked into that DC mission convinced we were both gonna die. Kind of like you did with the war. Maybe you've surrendered, too, at some point in the last few years -- same as me." Bucky's eyes snap up to him then, and Steve knows it to be true. "But whatever we believed, whatever we did to get us here, we're both here now. We're alive. We're fighting for -- a different kind of freedom, something neither one of us has had in a long time." A hint of a smile, sparking out of some shred of hope he can't subdue. "I don't regret that. I can't. You won't argue that out of me."

Bucky looks at the floor a long time after that, but eventually he nods. "Stubborn as ever," he mutters. 

"Damn right," says Steve; and when Bucky meets his eye, they smile a second, as though finally greeting an old friend. 

"So what else do you want to know?" Bucky asks, shaking his hair out of his eyes. 

Steve is forced to remember the task at hand. "Well, I guess I still need to know if you -- get the Soldier info. If you still think of eliminating me. When you think of that memory on the fire escape now."

Bucky only blinks in the pause that follows. "No," he says eventually, but then he cricks his neck in just such a way and Steve knows at once there's something he's not saying. "I think it -- it feels just like a memory. Maybe some extra -- nausea, pain in my head. But, um…" He looks away; licks his lips. "I don't know if it's just disgust at remembering I tried to kill you. It could be the programming, or it could just be… me. Reacting."

"Okay. Is that happening now?"

A steeling breath, and then Bucky's eyes on his -- a fierce, pristine, undeniable blue. 

"What do you think?" he asks.

A pause as Steve's heart beats him to unsteadiness. "Okay. Um... I guess I'm trying to gage the level of resistance you have just to remembering it at this stage. Would you say--"

"Like I said, it's possible I'm just still not _supposed_ to remember it. But I do remember it. Spontaneously, every time, without blacking out." A twitch at his mouth. "Technically progress. That's about as much analysis as I've done."

"Fair enough."

"Next question."

Steve hadn't expected not to be the stronger one, and yet to look at Bucky he'd swear he was the one closer to breaking. "You were seventeen," he manages a second later, swallowing against the husk of his throat. "When you -- fire escape." A hint of a smile, despite himself.

Bucky mirrors it, equally helpless. "Yeah."

"One of the -- key words listed, in the book, is just -- 'seventeen'."

Bucky nods, for a long, long time. "Okay."

"You still think that's likely the memory at hand?"

He sighs and shifts in his chair. "Let's test it. The word is in Russian, in the book?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. Say it."

Steve hesitates. 

"Say it, Rogers. Only one way to know."

Steve says it -- "Семнадцать," awkward on his lips but clear enough from practice. 

Bucky's eyes close, pain pinching at the corners of it. "That's the memory all right," he grits out, fist pressing against his leg.

"Can you describe to me what's happening right now?"

"Information's sparking that doesn't belong. Pavlovian response. Look at you and feel like you're not supposed to be here, like this scene is wrong. Like I'm supposed to be doing something but don't know what. It's vague, but it's -- meant to derail me. Meant to keep me from whatever I'm thinking."

"Are you -- how far are you from it?"

"It doesn't touch me." He pries his eyes open and locks with Steve's. "It's there, but I'm -- myself."

Steve nods; Steve believes him. He waits until Bucky blinks his eyes clear, until his fingers unclench from that ungodly white fist. 

"You okay?"

"Yeah." Bucky runs his hand through his hair. It's tremoring, but not by much. "I'm fine. It's, uh… quiet. Now."

"Feeling okay?"

"Fucking nauseated, but yeah."

"Pain?"

He hesitates. "Yeah. Nothing I can't handle."

Steve takes in a steadying breath; lets it out, slow, and watches as Bucky looks up at him. "There are nine others," Steve tells him, gently. "Whatever process you went through to get to this point, we gotta do nine more times."

Bucky leans forward on his knee and runs his hand hard over his face as though trying to scrub the truth from it. "I figured there were at least five."

"But you don't remember any more?"

"No. I remember there are steps but not -- their contents. All a wash after the fact."

Steve nods. "We -- I -- _T'Challa_ \--" He cuts out a sigh. "The information we have is that the trigger likely releases different streams of information into your head for each one of the words. That's why just the one didn't lead you into a rampage by itself. It's… also probably why you forget every time. Each memory stimulated separately puts out its own programming cue, some part of a directive, that when combined with the rest results in -- I don't know what you'd call it. I don't want to use T'Challa's terms."

"Use them," Bucky drags out.

"System override," Steve says. "You're inundated with so much diverse, systematic Winter Soldier information that, put together, it takes over. Bucky gets drowned out for a while, just because the programming in your head is so... permeating." He swallows against emotion as Bucky turns his face away. "Obviously, when you… when they wiped your memory, you had no real sense of who you were, so there was no baseline, nothing strong enough to bring you back from that programming. Without anything to break its hold on you, you stayed the Soldier for longer. That's why they -- kept wiping your identity. You were… more compliant."

"Probably linked negative reinforcement to remembering." 

"They probably did," Steve agrees. "T'Challa -- thinks that the Faustus brainwashing, whatever that is, isn't the only way they put information in your head."

"True, but it's the only stuff they put in that way. I'd guess, anyway. The rest -- the conscious stuff -- is just skills. Languages, that kind of thing. That's straight information, they didn't need to fuck up my brain too much for that."

"Okay. So the -- forgetting reinforcement --"

"That's brainwashing; totally different. I think of you, I get turned into the thing that wants to kill you. Cause and effect. Break that subconscious relationship, we start to dismantle the whole Soldier program." He hits his fist furiously against his leg, as though he should've thought of it himself. "I knew that."

"Do you -- remember? This process, turning memories into--"

Bucky shakes his head darkly and doesn't look at him. "I know this for other reasons."

All Steve can hear is the beat of his heart, for a while. "Okay. Um... the good news is that T'Challa thinks the brainwashing is the more reversible. These cause-and-effect relationships… they don't have to be this way. We just have to -- compel them a different way."

"And to do that we keep this up." He gestures between them, then at the room.

"Yeah."

Bucky's eyes flicker up to him. Steve's eyes swim for reasons he can't discern -- until Bucky tells him to breathe.

It's a tense beat, but then he does -- inhales wholly, not realizing he'd been holding it. "Don't worry about me," Steve manages on the exhale, almost laughing, hating himself. His fingers press so hard into his leg that they sear with the pain of tension, but it's better than what's constricting in his chest.

Bucky blinks at him, maybe to avoid an eye-roll. "Either we're in this together or we're not," he says, then frowns at him deeper. "Take another breath, Rogers, Jesus. Another. You know how to get through an asthma attack; anxiety's not that different, you got this."

"Is that what this is? I wondered."

"It's what it looks like. You'll feel better if you actually take the time to feel what you're bottling up, by the way. You ever try actually dealing with your emotions even one time?"

He can't help but to still smile. "Time was you were worse than me."

"Never happened."

"Okay," he says sarcastically.

Bucky smiles at the floor. "Times change," he mutters, then looks up as he presses emotion away again.

Steve nods at him, breathing. He blinks in slow, helpless affection. "Bucky." 

"Yeah."

"You know the first step to breaking the trigger was just... remembering who you were, right? You did that work."

"Yeah," he says, and nods.

"You've done it already. You got this. We go forward one word at a time. It'll take a while, and, uh, a lot of commitment, but we… we have the best evidence of all that it's possible, which is that you've already broken it once."

Bucky nods. " _Possible,_ " he says, as though to remind him of reality.

"I'm confident," Steve says. "That's all I'm trying to say."

"Okay." 

Skepticism hangs thick in the room. Steve smiles thinly. 

Bucky looks down at his nails and then up again. "Hanging in there?"

"I'm fine," says Steve. Apart from the humming under his skin, he even thinks he might mean it. "You?"

"I want to press on."

Steve nods. "Okay. I have the info I need. Do you have questions?"

"I, um… how many memories do you think you actually... From the word list, I mean, how many of them seem -- familiar?"

"I think I know five," Steve says. "Six if we include 'seventeen'."

He can't quite tell from Bucky's nod what he's thinking. "And the other four?"

"They're -- you know. Recognizable, thematically." He flashes another fragile smile. "Between the two of us I'm sure we'll narrow it down."

This, too, hangs with doubt. They're sitting so close together, yet they feel to be a world apart.

"When do you want to start?" Steve asks softly.

He sees the fear and resignation in his eyes, but Bucky blinks up at him anyway. "The sooner the better."

"Now?"

"Don't see why not."

"Okay." Steve steels himself; adjusts his posture in his seat. "Five options. Preference for approach? Chronological, easiest to talk about?"

"Chronological," Bucky husks. "Best start at the root of it."

He takes a breath. "Okay. I'm gonna start in vague terms and get narrow. Stop me anytime. I think... this one is linked based on a description I gave at the time. You tell me what you remember."

Bucky nods. 

"Do you remem -- ah. Well, we were -- still kids, pretty much, sitting by the water. It was early in the Depression. You told me you were gonna become a fisherman."

Bucky's eyes flick up to him, searching and perplexed. "How early?"

"I want to say '31. I was upset because you said you were gonna drop out of school."

"I did drop out of school."

"Yeah, but not for a while. Fortunately for you. You know I'd have decked you otherwise."

Bucky frowns into the corner of the room. "I wanted to become a fisherman in the Depression." He says it as though trying to convince himself of it.

"It wasn't that you wanted to. You said you were _going_ to." He hates the way he sounds, but he wants to see how much it takes for Bucky to remember. This is how it is going to be: halfway testing, half support. "Wanted to support your sisters since your dad still couldn't find work."

Bucky's eyes move slowly around the room, but they don't seem to land on anything. "I don't remember."

"You want to keep pushing?"

Bucky nods, steeling breath in his throat.

"We were out near the Navy Yard," he says. Miraculously, as though remembering what he's supposed to be doing here, he's found his voice has gone smooth. Bucky shuts his eyes and leans back in his chair, and for a second it almost feels normal -- like Steve's telling him a story, like they're reminiscing. "You'd gone and put your feet in the water. I was there, drawing you. The sun was setting. There was something about the light, I just wanted to… capture you, to remember you and the way you looked. The colour was…" He falters here, finally, seeing the tension drawing pale in Bucky's fingers. "Red. It was... a little too dark. We talked about if there was a storm coming…"

Bucky's eyes spring open. 

Something's not right. Steve watches in horror as something dawns over him: ruining, devastating. "Bucky."

The crease moves out of Bucky's brow. His chin quakes. He seems to be pressing something down. Steve clenches a fist against his thigh, swallows down bile, and waits. "Buck. Talk to me, what's going on?"

Bucky squints at him, as though confused to see him there. "Ready... to comply."

The floor falls out from under Steve in a second. 

"No," he says hastily. "No, Bucky, I don't want you to--" His heart skips a beat. " _Bucky._ I don't want you to comply. There's nothing to comply to, no orders here. No orders."

Bucky's expression is blank, but it isn't like anything Steve's seen before. It isn't as though he's being faced with the Soldier, but merely that Bucky's not -- there.

He surveys Steve, as though for his reaction. "Target acquired?"

It is, undeniably, a _question_. " _No,_ " Steve hisses. He can't parse this hesitation, but he's too afraid to waste time thinking it through. "I'm not the target, Bucky. I'm not going to give you a target, there are no orders. Just -- think about this, Buck, think for a _second._ "

"Captain Steven Grant Rogers." His words are gaining speed, stuck now in a sure and even monotone. "Date of birth zero seven zero four nineteen eighteen."

Panic grips at Steve's ribcage. He leans forward, fingers digging into his own legs. " _No._ "

"Captain America circa nineteen forty-two through nineteen forty-four, two thousand and twelve to present. Leipzig, Germany last known appearance." 

Then -- a falter, a flicker in his brow; a crick in his neck as he looks away. 

All at once, Steve _understands_ \-- why he sounds like this, why he's still speaking English. 

"Bucky... Oh, Bucky, _no_. Look at me, look at me, please." Steve can't breathe for desperation. "You're not the Soldier, I know you're not, and I don't want you to be. You don't have to convince me. I just want you to be Bucky, I'm not going to make you do anything. You don't have to convince me that you're the Soldier, because I don't want you to be."

"Leipzig, Germany last _confirmed_ appearance. Rumoured sightings in Wakanda, unconfirmed."

"You're Bucky Barnes, you know that. You're safe here. You don't have to pretend to be the Soldier. I'm not going to make you do anything."

"Ready to comply."

"This isn't a trap. This is what it looks like. I want to help you, I want you to stay yourself."

He says it again, in Russian this time -- "Ready to comply."

"You don't need to convince me. I'm done. I'm not saying any more. I'm not going to turn you into the Soldier, Bucky, I'm not going to do anything to hurt you. You are safe here, Bucky, Bucky, listen to me _please._ "

That time -- miraculously -- something breaks through. 

Bucky's eyes flit up, lips white and pressed together, breathing shallow and laboured. Whatever he's trying to convince Steve of has slipped away from him. 

Steve forces as much neutrality into his face as he can manage and tries not to drown in relief. "Thank you. Please listen to me. I think you're trying to convince me you're already the Soldier so I won't pursue the activation pattern, and I'm telling you that I don't want to pursue it either. I think -- that if you look into your mind, you'll remember we talked about this. You and me -- you and me both, we talked about this, decided it together, we arranged this. We're trying to understand what makes you act like the Winter Soldier, so that you never have to do those terrible things again. I said a word from the protocol for this reason alone. I'm not here to give you orders. I don't want you to become the Winter Soldier. I don't want you to kill me or anyone else. I'm not going to make you hurt anyone."

Bucky watches him for a long time. Steve waits; forces his breathing softer, less furious, trying desperately not to allow his panic to break through.

When Bucky opens his mouth, it is in increments. "I don't understand what is happening," he says.

Steve nods and takes a steadying breath. "Okay. I just want you to know I'm not going to hurt you."

"I'm--" He winces. "You presented me with information to... comply."

"No," Steve tells him. "Hydra put information in your head that triggers automatically when you remember certain things. We were just talking about the past." 

"Why?" 

"You know who I am, Bucky. It seems a bit strange that I -- that _I_ \-- would intentionally activate your training while alone with you in a room, unarmed. Doesn't it?" Bucky doesn't say anything. "You do recognize me, don't you?"

"Technically."

Steve blinks at that. "Okay."

"Are you -- him?"

"I…" Steve narrows his eyes. "I'm Steve."

Bucky nods faintly, but he does not look convinced. His hand clenches and unclenches against his knee; his gaze falls to it, as though finding it important somehow.

Steve's just glad Bucky's decided to trust him enough to break eye contact, but beyond that he can only wait, otherwise at a loss.

"You received a serum in 1942 to enhance your size and strength," Bucky mutters, when a few moments have passed. He shifts a bit; Steve has the sense he's more at ease, to have found something that seems to be true. "You're a match for me unarmed. This could be a test."

"That's a reasonable assessment," Steve agrees carefully. "But this is not a test. It is as I told you; I am trying to help you, so this never happens to you again."

He swallows and appraises Steve carefully. "How do I know you're not Hydra? Even you have breaking points."

Whether it's silence or noise that rushes in Steve's ears, he can't quite tell. 

"I'm not Hydra," he says quietly.

Bucky raises his chin. Steve can see he believes him.

The seconds tick by.

"Why are you helping--" Bucky's eyes narrow and shift to the side. "Me?"

"Because," says Steve. Bucky blinks at him. Steve takes breath deep into his lungs. "You're my friend."

"What do you want from me?" he gravels, through pursed lips.

"Nothing. I want you to be you, that's it. I'm just gonna wait with you until you -- seem more connected. Is that okay?"

He doesn't answer the question. Steve can't tell if any of this makes sense to Bucky or not, but then he can't even tell if it makes sense to himself. From time to time Bucky's gaze ticks around the room, as though searching for something, but otherwise he holds Steve's gaze.

"How about we talk a little and see what happens?" Steve suggests, after a while. "I -- know it's hard to trust me, but you gotta know I'm not going to make you do anything you don't want to."

Bucky's gaze slides down. He watches his hand open then close, open then close. "I trust you," he mutters.

Steve doesn't quite believe him, but maybe the words are enough. "Okay. Well, we haven't had much time to catch up since I found you in Bucharest." He straightens in his chair; crosses his arms over his chest, in case it prevents him from falling apart. "Why don't you tell me about what you liked in Europe? It's pretty different than it was during the war."

"I speak fourteen languages." 

"That's… a lot."

"English," he says. "Russian, German, French, Flemish, Croatian, Ukrainian--"

"I don't need a list, Bucky."

Bucky nods and shuts his mouth. "It was easy to drift."

Steve nods, too, and watches him watching his hand clench in and out of a fist. "How long were you in Bucharest?"

"Four months, eight days." Bucky's eyes snap up to him. His nostrils flare; he swallows hard against something. "I... liked it there."

Steve leans forward on his knees and holds his gaze as his anxiety rises. "You seem to have made yourself at home."

"It, um… it… it…"

"Hey. Take a breath. You're safe here, Bucky, you're okay."

Bucky looks around the room with wild eyes, breath growing haggard. "I don't like this."

In the face of Bucky's panic, Steve suddenly feels calm. It's a second of contemplation, but then he reaches, slow, careful -- wraps his fingers gentle at the back of Bucky's calf, thumb caressing at his knee. "You're okay. Try to keep breathing, focus on me. There's no danger here, you're okay."

Bucky shuts his eyes hard then opens them again, lips tight, air huffing through his nose. "This has happened before," he gravels out, and sounds more like himself; Steve exhales his mounting relief.

"That makes sense. What do you usually do?"

"I don't know. I don't know."

"Okay. You don't have to know."

"I don't -- I _don't_ \--"

"Let's keep talking. Books? I've read a lot of what you have now. Or -- um, do you -- Jesus, Bucky, I'm not gonna let you go, okay? You're okay."

Bucky nods, then says -- "Systematic language acquisition."

Steve blinks his confusion, but then understands. "Oh. Is that why -- all the way back from 1945?"

"Earlier books used the language patterns I was used to while I was trying to institute -- _learn_ new English language cues." His tone is technical, but Steve's just happy he's talking. "Eventually worked up to present, caught up on the internet, repeated phrases to myself until it stuck."

"And you remembered it?"

"I remembered everything." He sets his eyes on Steve, and it's not that he's calm, but no longer is he absent either. "Mind for languages, remember?"

Steve offers what he hopes looks convincing as a smile. "Sure."

"Think I'd like to do the same with Russian, so it stops feeling… like this. Foreign. Make it part of me instead."

"That's a good idea. I've been learning Russian, you know. Just a few words. Pronunciation's terrible."

"I noticed."

He smiles, more genuinely this time. "Still can't really read it either. I can recognize symbol patterns."

"It's, um. Hard to go between scripts."

"It is. Maybe not for you."

Bucky shakes his head. He's gone back to watching the opening and closing of his hand, foot tapping against the floor in manic rhythm. "Maybe."

Steve waits for something to settle. They both do. "You need anything?"

"No." He's quiet, but it sounds like Bucky -- like the man Steve met in that Bucharest apartment. He raises his face, looking pale with white lips. "What was the memory that got me here?" 

Steve hesitates. "Are you sure you want to--"

"Just -- let's -- it'll be better when I'm already…" He gestures loosely at his temple.

"Okay." Steve sets a tight fist against his lips, trying to combat the dryness in his throat, but doesn't let go of Bucky's leg. "Can you, uh, start? If you can? I want us to... I don't like the feeling that I'm doing this to you."

Bucky nods. His lips purse to form a word, but then press flat again. His fingertips press forcefully into his leg, then disengage and form a fist; he puts pressure on his own stomach. "We were -- by the water," he manages, only then.

"East River," Steve says, trying desperately to sound like he's not being ripped in half. "By the Navy Yard. You had your feet in the water. I was--"

"Drawing me," Bucky says. His fist hits against his thigh. "You, um -- liked the light. The way it..."

"You were talking about apprenticing on a fishing boat."

"Thought it was -- thought I had to make money. Pop'd been out of work, and I thought if I could be -- well. It was a stupid idea." He looks up at Steve, blinking. "I knew it would never turn into anything."

Steve's eyebrows shoot up. "You _knew_ it wouldn't have turned into anything."

"It was '31. Things were still getting worse, I knew that. I heard it at home every day, saw it in the streets. Of course it wouldn't have turned into anything."

A hesitant smile blossoms, as though to combat the ache in the very bones of him. "So why'd you try to go?"

"I guess I've never really been one to stay anywhere... except when it comes to you."

Steve's lungs fill of their own accord. "Yeah, pal. I know what you mean."

Bucky chews on his lip and avoids Steve's eye. "The word."

"The word?"

"The word. Behind the memory. The mechanism."

The present pounds back into Steve's body like a drum. "Oh."

"Just -- say it." He swallows around the grate in his voice. "In English."

"Bucky."

"It won't start the -- just let me try this." His hand taps at Steve's where it's wrapped at his leg and Steve interprets the gesture for what it is; opens his palm so Bucky can grip his hand against his leg. "That's why we're here, isn't it?"

Steve moves his other hand to grasp at his leg, too, in case it grounds him twice over. "The light over the water," he gravels, chin pursing as he says it. "The way it hit you -- and the storm was..."

"You always liked that," Bucky says, when Steve doesn't finish. "Sun on the horizon."

"I could see reds. I liked them, the way they -- the way you…" He keeps starting this sentence, but the next words never come. "I didn't understand it then, the way you looked to me."

"You talked about your pencils. Like one of them wasn't the right…" Bucky's gaze floats away.

Steve peels dead skin from his lip with his teeth. "Tuscan," he gravels.

"No," Bucky says absently.

A breath, deep and fortifying, into his lungs. "It, um… I said the sky looked rusted."

Bucky's chin quakes. His eyelids shudder shut.

"Hey, I'm done," Steve murmurs. "You're okay, Bucky, I've got you, you've got this. Look at me."

Bucky's eyes find his, out of focus, lips shaking. Steve holds his eye and breathes with him; redoubles the grip on his hand. "No orders. Just you and me."

Steve can't understand the process that Bucky is undergoing. Breath seems slow to come to him, taken in deep through clenched teeth; he swallows hard, throat working, nostrils flaring, until it becomes easier as more time passes for him to control the tremors wracking through him.

Then, thickly: "I'm gonna be sick."

Steve jumps to his feet. He turns to some basin left in the corner of the room, he imagines, for this exact reason. He sets it at Bucky's feet and sits as Bucky folds in half. 

This is something Steve can make sense of, something he understands: an opportunity for action. He runs his fingers gently through Bucky's hair, bunching strands of it into a loose fist, out of his way.

"Sorry," Bucky mutters absurdly, in breaks between retching.

It's almost a laugh, the sound he makes. "Don't be."

"I don't know why this happens."

"Shock."

Bucky nods into the basin, then spits. "I remember them doing this to me. Making me."

Steve blinks, trying to process. "Making the memory a--"

"Yeah."

Any good feeling sparking in him is overcome by that crashing wave of fury, nausea building in him in its own right. Steve shuts his eyes; grits his teeth. "What did they--"

"You don't want to know and I don't think you need to."

"Don't try to--"

"Let me still protect you from one thing, Steve." Bucky sits up slowly, fingers wracking through his hair, and he looks to Steve to be utterly himself, thank _god_. "I, uh -- at least I don't think I'm gonna pass out."

"That's…" Steve tries to square his body into a position that looks neutral. "I'm glad."

Bucky blinks hard, rolls his tongue around in his mouth; moves his face to the side, swallowing, frowning. "Rusted."

Panic grips at Steve's heart. "Buck."

"Can't think of the word in Russian."

Darkness hammers in the corners of his vision. "It -- I can -- listen, I don't know if--"

Bucky's eyes, though clouded with cynicism, are sharp with certainty. "Do it, Steve."

He still looks so pale, his fingers clenched into a fist against his thigh, and something bloody and sharp piques in the back of Steve's throat to see the steeled determination in him.

"Ржавый," he says. 

He flinches instinctively when Bucky's head bows; when his fist presses harder, painfully, against his leg. Steve reaches out, then; wraps his fingers over Bucky's, just in case it helps him. "Ржавый," he says again, and Bucky doesn't move this time, not even to throw Steve off. Every one of his muscles seems to scream with tension. Steve grits his teeth, runs hot as an autoclave; listens to the shrill sound in his ears, waiting for time to pass.

"I'm here," he says, as low as he can. "I'm here, Bucky. You're safe with me."

Bucky swallows. Pain creases in every line of his face. "No," he mutters, in Russian, in a voice unlike his own; but just as soon as he says it his face presses tighter into itself, throat contracting and dragging in some visceral groan. "No," he says, firmer. He hits his fist against his leg; Steve retreats, abrupt.

"Hey," Steve says. "You know where you are. You're okay."

Another harsh sound from his throat, then, agonized and still downcast -- "Shut _up_."

Steve's face slackens. He settles for watching, waiting; just does what he can to fit the scream building in him back in its box.

"Christ," Bucky says, after what feels like a century. He blinks hard and heavy, fist still pressing into his leg. His eyes are bloodshot beyond measure when he opens them and he rolls his jaw around on its hinge as though he's been punched -- but he's _here,_ he's Bucky, and Steve could just kiss him. 

He doesn't. In contrast with his pale face, Bucky's lips look to be almost purple with lividity of colour. Steve stares at them, lost for a second, before meeting his eye again. "I'm all right," Bucky tells him, nodding, sounding wrecked. "I don't feel good, but I'm -- I'm all right."

Steve takes a breath, dumbfounded. "Are you sure?"

Bucky nods again, swallowing often, as though nausea still builds in him. His hand fumbles awkwardly forward to knock at Steve's knee again, and Steve takes it easily, grasping at his palm. 

It doesn't take long to figure out that the shake is coming from him and not from Bucky. He tries to put it away, but this time -- with Bucky safe in front of him -- a bridge in him collapses. 

He brings his other thumb to Bucky's jaw and tilts his head forward until Steve can set their foreheads together, praying that if Bucky can't see him, Steve can keep pretending he's still intact. "We're not done here," Bucky husks. His thumb strokes at Steve's hand, but for whose comfort Steve's not sure. "Need to do this again until I re-map the response." Terror squalls in Steve's chest, and maybe he feels it because he adds, "Not now. Can't do this again today, but that's -- progress. That's progress, Rogers. I remember it. Sitting by the water, with--" A liquid sound; he cuts off, pulls himself too far away. "You," he finishes, and looks up at him, placid and unsteady. He nods. "I remember you. You were so small to me. I really thought I had to go then but I think I knew I couldn't leave you."

"It was your sisters," Steve says stupidly; then for a second, everything is still. 

When the world starts to slip off its axis in the moments that follow, Steve gets unsteadily to his feet.

"I have to step out," he says shortly, tone scraping against steel. "For a minute. Will, uh, you be okay? Do you need anything?"

His hand slips from Bucky's grip. Bucky's brow creases with pained recognition as he looks up at him, but Steve just blinks and tries to hold steady. "Yeah," Bucky gravels, concerned. "I'm fine, I don't, uh... will you... be back?"

Something is dissolving fast within him, but this gives him pause -- a final shred of control. He stoops, thumb at Bucky's jaw, and brushes the final remnants of calm at his hairline with his lips. 

"I will always be back," he mutters against his brow, and means it.

When his hand withdraws, tension strings between them. Something elastic expands, then contracts -- words unsaid, or emotion left to wither in the white heat of rage. The edges of the world grow defined; Steve has become vicious. He maps a path out of the room in his mind and then follows it, rigid. 

It's ten steps down the corridor, once the door shuts behind him. It's a turn of the corner, then six steps further down. It's one stride into the bathroom then another two to shut the door -- one more to find himself gripping at the sink's cool porcelain, to take stock of himself in the mirror.

The sight of his own pale face, of these shoulders too square and too large to need anger, is the last pulled thread of his remaining resolve.

His fist hits the glass before he knows he's thrown it.

The mirror shatters. It is so beyond satisfying. Glass falls against the sink, then the floor, shambling as it goes. The final notes of it linger long after it's hit in the cavern of the bathroom, and Steve stares at the shards of it, forcing air into his lungs. 

Something whistles in his chest like he's never had a full breath in him. His hands stay locked in tight spirals at his sides. He hears each tinkering reminder of the force of gravity as though it linked direct into his heart. Each shard is a dagger, plunged at the root of him.

He looks up. There is a flaw in the wall. It's where the mirror used to hang, and it's fragile, he's fragile. Bucky's fragile, everything _breaks_ , is there nothing left that won't _fucking_ \--

He hits the wall again, furious with it; a cry breaks from his throat. His fingers burn; concrete lies on the other side. He punches it again, then again, then thrice again in quick succession until the plaster gives way. Momentum guides him. He turns, slams his left fist into the wall at his side, again, then again, then again and again. Control slips; the decision to break is no longer his. With every strike heat rises in the room, crawling over him, filling his lungs, leaving his muscles burning alight.

The scream drags out of him before he knows the sound is his. Plaster crumbles to the ground, the destruction absolves him; in a broken world, he doesn't need control. The final shreds of his sanity dissolve, lose substance. His fingers pry under the edge of the gyprock and pull. The entire wall crashes down, leaves wires and plumbing exposed. Steve slams the heel of his hand into the sink beside him and he revels when it shatters, when pain shoots up his arm. He's left heaving, it's agony; it's a reprieve. Some whooping sound is leaving him in rhythmic bursts, deep and haggard and rooted in the unknown, and he hits again and again until heat spills out of his eyes in basalt and fire.

He needs to feel something underneath his hands to keep his heart beating. Being a fighter doesn't mean shit if there isn't a target to face.

It takes him a moment to realize he's struggling for air.

He folds against the last standing wall and lets the sobs take him.

He falls to his hands and knees, and then to his forearms when his wrist hurts too much. He punches it against the floor just to feel the damage sear, but there's no heart in it; his shoulders shake, his lungs scramble for oxygen, his vision blots out, he is awash in others' cruelty.

A long time later, he discovers his hands are bloodied. 

His wrist is throbbing furiously where he slammed it into the sink. The room is completely destroyed, wires hanging loose, pipes exposed. Shame blushes in him as he drags himself to his feet. White dust hangs -- coats his throat, grates in his lungs. 

There is a peculiar silence, one he doesn't like. He's done too much. He's gone too far.

He wipes furiously at his cheeks, hating the heat that sticks in his eyes. He reaches for the bolt of the cold water tap, suddenly desperate to wash all this off himself. It shreds at his fingers, but at last the tap leaks pathetically. He rinses his hand under the meagre stream, then grits his teeth against the pain to rinse the other. He rubs water over his arms until he shivers with it, taking the plunging shock of cold against his skin, then cups his hand until it overflows, clean and crystalline. 

He throws the water over his face. More skin tears off when he turns the tap off. He dabs his fingers against his shirt, then wraps them in it. 

For a second, the room drops away. Steve becomes struck by the way cotton forms; becomes elastic around his hand, the way it retains its shape when he lets it go. 

Delicately, certain his outburst hasn't gone unnoticed, he turns around and opens the door.

Two Dora Milaje are waiting for him, blades drawn, at the ready but hardly aggressive. Steve assumes they have instructions to hover, but not to interfere. He puts his hands in the air in mock surrender, sighing hard. "I'm sorry," he says, voice torn but even. "It won't happen again."

The Dora Milaje stare at him for a long time. Steve holds gaze with Nakia, who he recognizes from her post in the guest wing. Eventually, her shoulders drop; she waves the other guard away, and she files out in silence, leaving them alone.

White dust settles around them. Nakia blinks at him slowly. 

"You understand how this appears," she says.

"I'll pay for the damages," Steve tells her. "Hell, I'll repair it myself. Whatever his Highness wants."

"You could not begin to do either."

"Well, regardless. I take full responsibility."

Nakia seems to mull this over. Steve wonders what her motives are in holding this conversation. "Is it your habit to destroy your host's homes?" she says, then.

"No," says Steve. "Usually it's strangers' homes I destroy."

There's a quirk, nearly imperceptible, in the crease of her brow. "Property is not the King's concern." Inexplicably, another tick of tension melts out of her shoulders. She stands up straighter and places her unarmed hand on her hip, leaving her stance almost casual. "There is nothing here that is not replaceable. I am under orders to watch, but not to intervene. Just know, Captain--"

"Steve Rogers," he says automatically.

"--that it is telling, to some, that the first punch thrown was by you and not your friend." She tilts her head toward the room where Bucky sits.

He is exhausted, true, but he is never free from anger; it twinges within him, petulant. "Please know I'll make myself available to discuss this at any time with -- whomever," he says, preferring not to acknowledge her statement. "I didn't mean for this to happen and I'm sorry it did. But right now I want to get back to my friend, unless you have an objection."

Nakia looks at him sidelong, then nods. "You may go," she says, but adds as Steve pushes past -- "Do not neglect yourself, Captain Rogers. You require assistance, as he does."

Steve is so beyond weary. "We all do," is all he says, and he moves away in silence. 

Feeling comes slowly back to him with every step. Regret fills to the tips of his fingers; he flexes his busted hand, just to feel something else. He left Bucky in a fit of selfish passion. All this rhetoric about how he'll never leave, and now--

He turns the door handle and pokes his head inside, half-convinced he'll find the room empty. But Bucky is still there -- motionless, staring at the wall or empty space, breathing too steady, turning slowly to look at Steve with steeling, white knuckles.

Steve blinks his hesitation, but he can see Bucky is still self-possessed, at least. "Hanging in there?" he asks -- too quiet, too much acknowledging their broken, brittle selves.

"Yeah," Bucky rasps, narrowing his eyes. "Are you?"

Steve steps inside. Bucky appraises his bloodied knuckles and the way he holds his arm, and the way his clothes and hair are covered in plaster. 

He doesn't look surprised, but he doesn't look happy. "You can't do this every time, Steve."

Steve's eyes shut in regret. This time when shame rushes in him, he's ill with it; he leans against the closing door. "I know." 

"It takes a lot," he gravels, voice too contained, and when Steve opens his eyes he sees him grappling with calm. "For me to get in control myself these days. You get that?"

"I -- yeah, Buck. I get that."

"But I do it."

"I know." He sighs. "I know, I just--" That _twinge_ in his gut again -- surging high, hardly exorcised. 

He stretches his broken skin taut over his knuckles. Bucky watches him, knowing. It isn't that the anger has left him, but that it has found a shallow home in the curve of his ribs. He needs a new strategy if he's going to get them out of here.

"Listen," Steve says, then forces a shaking smile. "You hungry?"

"Christ," Bucky mutters, watching him; then -- "No. Not remotely."

A laugh coughs out of him, full of something Steve regrets. "Me neither," he says. "You want to get out of here anyway, watch a movie or something?"

Bucky stares at him a while. He reaches out -- takes Steve's wounded wrist between his fingers. "You should get this looked at."

Steve's falling again, too touched by his gentleness. It's not that Bucky hasn't always been careful with his injuries, but after all this time it's so much, too much. "You, uh… want to do anything specific?" he asks, and pulls his hand away. "Drink water? Take a nap?"

Bucky reads his face in abject concern, but then shakes his head and folds his fingers away again. "Just need time to get out of my mind."

"Okay." Steve nods. "No problem. You want company, or…?"

"I, uh…" Bucky looks away and frowns, and Steve sees the defeat on his face for just a second before he sweeps it away. "It… would help. Just to..." They lock eyes. "If you don't mind."

"I don't mind." He smiles and holds out a hand. 

Bucky blinks at it, then takes it. Steve pulls him to his feet. His other hand sets gentle at his back and they stand a moment, hands clasped. Bucky's face stays turned to the floor, as though finding steadiness. 

A pull builds, develops. Steve doesn't want to be the first to move.

"Sorry," Bucky mutters. "I don't feel so solid after shit like that."

"I don't blame you." Steve finds some source of effort; lets go of his hand. Bucky grabs at his back, much less for steadiness than for comfort, and they hobble out of the room.

He catches Nakia's eye when they walk past. Steve's gut jolts; he throws an elbow around Bucky's neck and pulls him in close, hoping it's enough to keep him from looking. It is; a tremor wracks through him as Bucky leans in, and his hand clenches in Steve's shirt, leaving him worried about just what it is he's keeping in. 

"So I know you like musicals," Steve mutters against his brow, aiming to distract.

"I don't," Bucky rasps, then seems to shake himself off and stands upright again. " _You_ do, though."

"I'll let the fiction pass on account of the fact you're having a bad day. You seen much else? The classics? Casablanca?"

"I know enough about Casablanca to know I don't want to watch it. No explosions, no psychological thrillers, no horror, no straight romance bullshit. Cut me a break."

"That pretty much leaves drama and comedy."

"Both terrible."

Steve smiles, fitful and warm. "Well, then I think we're just back down to musicals."

"Alright, Rogers, I hear you. You want to watch a musical. Just say so next time."

Hard emotion swells in his throat at just the same time as his abiding fondness. He pauses to swallow it down and he clicks open the door to his bedroom. "Seen West Side Story?"

"Pass."

 _Yes, then._ "How about Wizard of Oz?"

A tense beat; then -- "Not since '39," he says, which is code for _I was dragged to theatres by a dame under false pretenses and barely saw any of it based on events that then proceeded._

Steve smiles and nods and pulls away from Bucky as they enter the room. "There's mouthwash in the cabinet," he says, giving him a final sidelong look as he steps away.

"Is that a hint?" Bucky mutters, turning away.

"Informational note. I'll bring up the movie on the… television… library."

Bucky looks so far beyond tired. He moves wearily toward the en suite in Steve's room and Steve watches him go, beating back his concern. "There's a television library?" 

"Buck -- the television _is_ a library."

"Holy shit," Bucky deadpans.

"Pal, you don't know the half of it."

Bucky closes the door to the bathroom halfway. Steve takes the opportunity to check on his swelling wrist, on his knuckles for bleeding. His fingers are fine, already healing, but his wrist is ballooning to the point of concern.

In the interest of pre-empting an argument, Steve moves to the corner of the room and drags a first aid kid from inside the cupboard, helpfully left there by T'Challa, or maybe Sam six months past. He starts sorting bandages with one hand, listening to Bucky in the bathroom -- closing a cupboard, turning taps on and off.

He realizes suddenly there's no mouthwash in the world you can open with one hand. 

Steve swears under his breath and moves across the room, knocking gently on the door. "Buck?" he says, pushing it open--

Bucky straightens hastily from where he'd been leaning, his forehead on the counter, pressed against his fist. "What?" he cuts harshly -- then, concealing, hand pressed at a face wet with tears, he tries again, softer. "What do you want, Steve?"

Steve doesn't move, feet rooted to the spot. He's not sure what he expected. "Bucky, I--"

"Give me a second, would you?"

Steve thinks about leaving. Bucky's entitled to his choice. But something in him snaps, and he steps swiftly across the room instead.

He pulls Bucky in and it's a long, driving second before Bucky responds. Steve waits, terrified; but then his hand flies up and clenches in Steve's shirt, pulling him in just as hard. 

Steve exhales. He holds Bucky's face against his neck and whatever's followed them out of that room overtakes; drops Steve's voice to a grind, and leaves them both tremoring, holding on like they're all the other has. 

"You don't deserve this, Bucky," Steve mutters at his temple. "You don't deserve any of this, and I don't -- _Bucky_ , I--"

"Shut _up_ , Steve," Bucky whispers, and he sounds furious, overcome. He presses into Steve with all he has left, and Steve takes it all; takes him in. "Just shut the fuck up and let me -- _be here_ , okay, just be _real_ , and _shut up_."

These are things that Steve has the power to do.

So he holds on and stays, and doesn't say another thing.

  


  



	6. Chapter 6

  


  
**R A P P R O C H E M E N T**  
_(some steps are lateral)_  
_december 2016_   


  


Bucky falls asleep for nearly an hour, face buried in Steve's hip. When he does wake he sits bolt upright, blinking and wordless, as though surprised to see Steve there.

It's a surreal moment, watching Bucky try to think through the haze of sleep while Dorothy dances on the screen. 

"Hey," Steve says, trying to bring him back.

Bucky's gaze wanders blearily around the room. He pushes himself back until he's sitting with his back against the headboard, his shoulder brushing against Steve's. He's not quite leaning against him, but he's as close as he can get. 

"How long was I out?" he gravels, not sounding quite awake.

Steve watches him a moment before turning back to the TV. "About an hour."

"That all?"

"Yeah."

Bucky sits in silence for a while. "Feels like longer."

Steve nods. "You need anything?"

"No." He swallows hard. It doesn't take a genius to figure out he's not great at waking up these days.

Thinking it best to leave him to process, Steve pretends to watch the movie and actually measures the steady rise and fall of Bucky's chest; feels relieved, privileged, just to be able to do that much. The next motion from either one of them comes several minutes later, when Bucky picks up Steve's arm and bends gently at his wrist, face falling in disapproval.

"This is wrong," Bucky says, voice more or less back to normal. He coaxes Steve's hand straight, trying better to understand its damage. "It even sits wrong."

Steve shouldn't be surprised that this is somehow Bucky's first priority, but he is. "It's a little swollen, that's all."

"I don't think so." Bucky leans into a particularly strange bend and watches as Steve winces. "That hurt?"

"Well, _yeah,_ Buck."

"A wrist's entire job is to bend, it's not supposed to hurt."

"What person bends their wrist like _that_?"

He runs a thumb against the pattern of his bruising. "Hit it pretty hard, huh?"

"You could say that."

"Wall stud?"

Steve gives a short sigh. "Porcelain sink."

Bucky nods, as though he should've expected that. "Do you want--" He frowns and tries again. "I can -- try to figure out what's wrong."

"There's nothing wrong. It's healing."

"This what your healing usually looks like?" He stares at Steve. Steve stares back. "Get T'Challa's people to look at it, then, if you know what's good for you. This place seems to be bleeding with nurses."

"It's _fine_."

"It is not fine. You have a structural issue. At least find out what the problem is, you stubborn bastard."

Steve scowls, but nudges his arm against Bucky, inviting him to look into it after all. Bucky stares another few seconds, but then nods at the remote; Steve mutes the TV. 

Trying miserably to maneuver with one hand, Bucky plants Steve's elbow against his thigh and rotates his wrist into gentle bends and flexes, careful to register Steve's hissing. Steve doesn't say anything; only watches as Bucky studies his arm, mapping his reactions. "I think it's broken," Bucky mutters.

"I don't think it's broken."

"Of course you don't. Eight carpal bones, Rogers, lots of potential for catastrophe."

"What do you know about it?"

"I boxed. This isn't behaving like a sprain."

Steve can really only watch as Bucky leans around his hand, feeling for something, thumb planted against his palm. "Any numbness in your fingers?" Bucky mutters, not meeting his eye.

In fact, Steve had spent most of the time Bucky was asleep stretching and flexing his arm, trying to stop feeling the pins and needles coursing through it. He takes a deeper breath, finds himself being taken in by Bucky's care. "A little."

"A lot, then."

He cuts out a harsh sigh. "Why even ask if you know so much?"

It's Steve's good fortune that Bucky seems to find his petulance endearing more than anything else. He shifts his knees forward on the bed and pulls Steve's arm until it's resting across his chest. "Option one," he says, pressing deeper into his forearm. "You can call for a nurse -- get it checked out by a professional like you should, maybe get screened for surgery."

"Surgery! It's not that bad."

"You think you can fuck up your hand this bad and just wait until it goes away? You've got soft tissue damage like you wouldn't _believe_ \--"

"It'll heal."

"--and _something_ in here is not where it's meant to be. You are damn lucky you didn't snap a ligament. It could've easily been a lot worse."

Steve hisses his discontent as Bucky presses a thumb into his palm. "You know when you put it that way," Steve says, "it sounds like you even agree that it's not that bad."

Bucky stares at him. Steve folds his smile away. "What's option two?" he says softly.

"I'm most concerned about the numbness. Suggests a pinched nerve. I'm willing to believe you really could heal a fracture; I wouldn't doubt it's the first time, either, since you hate medical professionals this much."

"I'm usually very compliant," he deadpans.

"Your mother doesn't count." 

"She knew what she was doing!"

"Most people in the medical profession know what the fuck they're doing, Rogers. It's 2016." Oh, god help them, this is familiar. Steve can't help but to smile in the face of the fondness swooping in his gut. "Let me at least wrap it, if you're going to be like this. You shouldn't be using a sausage like a hand."

There's something about the situation that's registered in some deep recess in his mind as the only thing he's wanted for years. He looks at Bucky through his eyelashes. "I think it's still a hand."

"Beg to differ." Bucky's eyes meet his, blue and profound. "You gonna let me apply the minimum possible standard of care to your very likely fractured wrist?"

"Sure, Bucky." He fights against a smile for reasons he can't pinpoint.

Bucky sees it; rolls his eyes as he steps off the bed. He comes back with the first aid kit, shaking his head. 

"Masochist," he mutters.

Steve's grin is broadening. "Sorry."

"No you're not."

"No, I'm not."

It's easy to flirt. It seems to put Bucky at ease at the same time that it tenses him. The crease in his brow is lesser, at least; clarity sparks in his eyes. 

"You were just gonna leave it like this?" Bucky nods at Steve's wrist; unfurls an ace bandage from out of the first aid kit with severity.

"I'm not four feet tall anymore. I can take a little bruising."

"A _little_ bruising. So this is just impressionist body art?"

Steve cocks his head. "What are you thinking, _Camille on her Deathbed_?"

"Christ," Bucky mutters, then adds -- "It's _Starry Night_ if it's anything."

The laugh bubbles out of his chest in surprise alone. "You remember my art rants."

Bucky doesn't look up. "Mostly."

The smile drops off his face. He's a goddamned idiot. "Sorry."

"How'd you ever see any of those paintings, anyway?" Bucky's gaze flickers up to Steve, like he wants to read his answer before he hears it. "Hard blues were never exactly in your visual wheelhouse."

"Shade. Gradient. Paintings like that taught me a lot about colour."

Bucky hums and keeps working. Steve accepts the bandage Bucky hands him and watches as he starts tugging where it wraps around his wrist. "Hey," Steve says, suddenly remembering. " _You_ draw now."

"What?" Bucky frowns. "No I don't."

"I saw the sketches in your notebooks. They're not bad, Buck."

There is a pause. Bucky doesn't look at him. "They're nothing," he says, and takes the bandage back from where Steve's pulling it taut. "They're just -- sketches. I was trying to... you know, see something through the haze. Hardly what you'd call art."

"I mean… well, okay." He doesn't literally bite his tongue, but it's a close thing. "If you ever want tips."

"Not a hobby." His eyes flicker up and down again with lightning speed. "But thanks."

Steve can't pinpoint the precise source of his embarrassment, but decides it's best to save him from it regardless. "First time I saw anything Van Gogh painted after my vision restored I couldn't believe it was the same piece," Steve mutters. He watches Bucky's hand move around and around his wrist; reaches out and pulls at a folded edge of the bandage when Bucky's breath breaks with frustration to see it. "Spent some time looking through all that after they pulled me out of the ice. It's… pretty different."

"Guess so." They work together in silence, for a minute. "You still do any of that?"

"What, sketch?"

"Just art."

Steve shakes his head. "Not so much."

"How come?"

 _It's harder when you're not around._ "Guess I'm not the same person I was," he says, and gives what he hopes is a smile.

Bucky accepts this in tacit silence. "Sometimes I -- I -- I dunno." He clears his throat. There's a shake to it, Steve can hear. "I think it's a waste." His hand fumbles in sudden nervousness, and Steve catches the bandage as it unravels. "All those dead-end dreams."

"For both of us," Steve says, handing it back.

"You had talent."

"So did you."

Bucky snorts. "At what, cowardice?"

" _Not_ cowardice. Bucky." His sentence breaks off when Steve sees the look on his face: the curl of his lip, the slight tremor in his chin. Steve takes a breath and tries again. "Always thought you'd have made a pretty sharp architect."

Surprise lights in all corners of his face, fast replaced by abject incredulity. " _Architect?_ Where the hell'd you get that from?"

"All that factory work, your head for math…" Steve shrugs. "You understood the materials, the structure of things. I assumed you'd be good at putting them together." Bucky's staring at him, motionless. Steve can see the way his heart is pounding. "Didn't I always tell you I thought you'd do great things?"

"When would I have had the money to do that?" he bites.

"You found a way to make art school happen for me. For a while you were supporting me _and_ your sisters, your Ma..."

" _You_ supported you. It was a debt tally, not benevolence. You were supposed to pay me back."

"Oh, okay. I'll get right on that."

"Don't fucking derail."

"Come on, Buck, we both knew I was on borrowed time. Who knows how many years I had left." For all the honest emotion flashing on Bucky's face, Steve wonders where he's left his defenses. "You took nothing for yourself. We would've found a way to make something happen for you. I know your sisters wanted that for you too."

"I never wanted -- anything like that."

"You liked to be the stable one, the one who never asked for a thing. But I think you wanted more than you had."

"Steve, _goddamnit_ , I had more than--"

There's a tweak in his voice; he cuts off. He's staring at the comforter, creased where they've lain. "I had more than I thought possible," he says. "No point dwelling on it now."

Steve watches Bucky fumble with tucking the end of the bandage into itself. His hand is shaking. Steve reaches his free hand to help, but Bucky shoots him a dirty look. "You in a hurry?"

"Nothing but time." It comes out too fond, again. Steve clears his throat and settles for watching Bucky work, folding his hand away. "You know I have those schematic options around here. For your arm. If you ever want to have a look at them."

Irritation flickers anew on his face. "You're the world's most annoying broken record, you know that?"

"I just don't want you to struggle."

"Who's struggling?" Bucky reaches for a metal clip in the first aid kit. "Picture of health and happiness here, Rogers."

"If you don't want a new prosthetic, I can drop it."

"Someday, maybe. It's not on my list of things to deal with today."

"Well if today is anything to go by, I'm not sure the risk is what you think it is."

A pause; then Bucky pulls back, the clip falling away. "One result does not a pattern make, Rogers."

"I just meant it's not a weapon if it helps you."

"Everything's a weapon if you try hard enough."

"By that logic, you shouldn't have _any_ tools at your disposal." 

Another mistake; Bucky's gut visibly contracts. Steve reaches out and grasps loosely at his arm, trying to buy time as he thinks of something to fix it. "I didn't mean that either," he says, apologetic.

Bucky blinks his gaze to Steve's hand. "You gonna keep digging this grave until it's time to lie down in it or you got a different plan?" 

"I just meant that you deserve access to things that will help you." He gestures at his own wrist. "This task is needlessly difficult."

"Sorry to waste your time."

"That's not what I mean and you know that. I've already told you I prefer your help any day." He thrusts his arm back toward him. "Are you gonna fasten this on or not?"

Bucky stares at him flatly, but then takes up Steve's wrist again. "Rich you yelling at me when it's your foot in your mouth."

"My foot's always in my mouth," he mutters.

"Well. That's true." This time when Bucky tries to place the clip, he gets it on.

Steve hands him another one, and then it's done; his wrist is tightly wrapped, managed with obvious skill, even with only one hand. "Thank you," Steve says, looking at him fondly.

"Yeah, whatever." Bucky collects the first aid kit and does not look back. "It's what we do, Rogers."

Steve watches him step away, trying to find whatever it is that's lain Bucky bare. He's left instead to watch as Bucky sets the materials back on the desk and leans against it, fingers curled into a fist, his back to Steve as though concealing something.

"Guess I can't take a shower now, huh?" Steve says, hoping to bring him back.

Bucky huffs with laughter -- maybe forced. "Should've thought of that before we got started. I'm not going through all that again."

"Guess you'll have to tolerate me being covered in plaster dust."

"It tops my list of burdens." Bucky's thumb rests on the top book on a stack of paperbacks Steve's brought with him -- all stolen from Bucky's apartments, the habit following Steve as it seems to have Bucky.

"I think you've read all those." Steve rolls off the bed and pulls his shirt off by the back of his collar, running his hand through his hair to at least pretend at some minimum standard of cleanliness. "There's a shelf in the corner if you want."

"Thanks. Uh… what're you…" Bucky's head falls, burdened by sudden awkwardness. "What's your day... what are you doing?"

Steve turns as he pulls a clean shirt over his head -- an awkward affair with one bum hand. "No plans." He pauses to reposition halfway through, only to glance up to see Bucky turning quickly away again. He blinks at him, dumbfounded. "Uh… what are you... gonna do?"

"I dunno." His thumb leafs through the pages of the book at the top of the pile, again and again. "Weirdly can't stop thinking about this cake I almost made few days ago. Six months ago. Whatever. Bummed I never did."

"Sure we could arrange that." 

"They got plums in Wakanda?"

"I'm sure we could arrange to get some." Steve frowns and steps forward as Bucky runs his thumb through the book, again and again. "You okay?"

"Yeah." Bucky picks up the book and sets it aside, then pauses before doing the same with the next one, placing it on top of the first. "It'll pass."

Steve blinks. He watches as Bucky transposes the pile, one book at a time. "What will?"

"Restlessness. Noise." Another book. "Doesn't matter."

Steve watches him stack, a while. "You want to talk about it?"

"No."

To his credit, Steve at least hesitates before following up. "Is it… earlier? Still on your mind?"

Bucky doesn't talk until the whole pile of books has re-formed to its previous height five inches from where it was. He stares at it, like he doesn't know what to do with it now that it's finished. After a second he moves a hesitant hand to the top of the pile and starts over -- moves them left to right, this time. "There's a lot I haven't processed," he mutters eventually.

"Sure," Steve says, watching him.

"I didn't pass out."

"No, you didn't."

He pauses; his eyes flit to the side. "What you said about different strains of programming. Was that one of them? When I..."

Steve takes in a steadying breath and sits down on the edge of the bed. "It's possible."

"But you don't think so."

"Do you?"

Bucky moves three more books before he answers. "I don't know." He is very quiet.

Steve cups his hands loosely over one another and presses them to his mouth, elbows planted on his knees. "Has it happened before?"

"Not with anyone else in the room." He closes his fist against the table and tilts his head, just incrementally, toward him. "You had it right. I was trying to convince you."

"I -- yeah. I know."

"How?" He turns a notch closer. "How did you know?"

Steve thinks back to the day he met the Soldier. He'd seen no electric in that blue, seen nothing he sees in Bucky now.

"I just did," Steve says, quiet.

Bucky's breathing is deeper, like he's forcing it that way. He looks at Steve the way he did when he first found him in Bucharest, caught between wary and knowing.

"I think the programming kicked in when you located the memory," Steve tells him. "Like we expected. Maybe the programming did make you disconnect from your identity a bit, but I -- listen, I'm no professional, but I find it just as likely that you… shut down on your own. Tried to defend yourself from the programming, when you felt it start up."

Bucky's head turns away. "That's -- bad."

"I… I'm not so sure."

"Steve." His hand closes over itself and rests, for a second. "Holding onto who I _am_ is all I _have_."

Steve nods and looks at him. "Yeah, Buck. That's what I'm saying. I think you checked out the second you felt any indication of the programming in order to protect yourself from it. A separation of spheres."

Bucky's hand rubs over his mouth, shaking furiously. Steve grinds his teeth and forces himself to stay still. "But -- if I'm not _present_ , how am I supposed to _fight it_?"

"You said this has happened before. You've always found your way back." He swallows. "And you found your way back today. You're scared of it, there's no reason to think it will happen every time, I just -- you--" Steve huffs out a breath. "You're _safe_ with me, Bucky, no matter what happens. What's happening may not be. But you are. I don't know what else to say except that."

"Don't feel safe."

Steve's heart falls and falls. "When's the last time you did?"

Bucky doesn't have an answer to that. If first by slow increments, his hand finds the stack of books again; his thumb runs through the pages. The motion must ground him -- something about the sound and feel of it, maybe; the smell of old paper. Steve thinks back to the steady opening and closing of own hand earlier that day -- the way Bucky'd watched it, soothed by its cadence.

"Can I help?" Steve says.

"No." He starts stacking the books again. "It'll pass."

 _It'll pass,_ like a mantra. Steve files that one away.

"It's something to do," Bucky adds.

 _That_ makes sense to Steve. "Until the noise subsides."

He nods. "More options were available to me when I had two hands."

Steve blinks at him a second, then steps toward his bag. "Do me a favour. Sit at the desk with your feet propped up."

Bucky turns, abrupt, annoyed. "Steve."

"Try this one thing. Then I'll leave you to stack books."

Bucky shuts his eyes in frustration, but then, draggingly, does as Steve asks. Steve fishes the last of Bucky's old notebooks out of his belongings and folds the cover back to a blank page. "Here," he says, and crosses the room to drop the book into his lap. He hands him a pencil. "It's how I used to draw when I'd break my arm."

Bucky blinks at the paper, then up at him. "Not a hobby, I told you."

"So fill the page with scribbles. Gotta be more interesting than moving books back and forth." 

He stares for several pulsing beats, but finally takes the pencil with begrudging gratitude. "Should've at least remembered that." He gestures at him and sets loosely upon the page. "Broke your arm about once a month."

"Not true." Steve sets a hand at Bucky's shoulder and squeezes gently before pulling away. "Twice in total, maybe. Slow to--"

He cuts off, halting dumbly in place when Bucky's fingers snatch at his withdrawing hand. 

"Sorry," Bucky says. There's a waver in it; he swallows, thick with tension. "I, uh…"

Steve blinks a second, then slowly, hesitantly, reaches to brush a thumb along the line of his neck. Bucky's eyes flicker closed; he tips his head gently to the side, his whole body seeming to relax.

Steve's heart is in his throat. Bucky swallows. Steve can hear the stick in it. "Sorry," Bucky says again, voice locked away.

"Don't be." Steve sounds as he feels: drunk, or in love. He turns his hand, brushes the pads of his fingers across Bucky's hairline. His thumb sets at his jaw and Bucky's breath intakes, an ambrosial sound. 

Bucky takes Steve's hand and folds his fingers long over his, Steve's palm against his neck. The pencil Steve gave him falls to the ground, forgotten. "Just -- stay a minute?"

"Sure, Buck. As long as you want."

"I, uh… I don't know what you... I don't have an agenda."

He doesn't follow, but he nods anyway. "Okay."

"This helps. You're warm."

Steve gives a helpless laugh and thinks of when it was the _chill_ of his hands that Bucky sought out. He looks more embarrassed now than Steve's ever seen him. To see it is an ache in his chest, a keening in his gut. 

"I don't, um…" Bucky swallows against mortification. He shakes his head; ticks his eyes up to him, frowning. "Are you, um... seeing anyone?"

Another laugh coughs out of him and _god_ it must be contagious, because Steve hasn't felt this nervous in years. "No, Bucky. I'm not seeing anyone."

"Okay. I don't -- six months, I mean, you don't have to -- you can go." He moves his hand from where he'd set it over Steve's; sets it over the notebook in the shape of a fist, then sets the notebook on the table, rolling out of the chair. "Or I will, Jesus. This is your room. Sorry." 

"Bucky -- hey." He grabs at Bucky's arm. "Stop."

Bucky lets himself be pulled back. He turns to face him. Steve puts his hand back at his neck; Bucky's eyes close, and Steve cocks his head, so beyond grateful just to be _here_ , in this moment. "Are you asking me what I want -- romantically?"

"I'm asking if--" Bucky stops, licks his lips; looks askance, terrified. "If you're still--"

Steve's hand spreads loosely over his hip. "Interested?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, Bucky." Steve nods, hardly believing this is even a conversation. "I'm still interested."

Bucky seems to shudder with relief, or in fear. "With all the--"

"Yeah. With all of it. With everything. Bucky, I--"

Breath cuts out from Bucky's throat and saves him; gives him the opportunity to stop, to swallow his words, when he thinks Bucky might speak. He doesn't; it's still a relief. Bucky's fingers grab at Steve's hand, instead, as though he's been holding back for hours. 

He presses each of Steve's broken knuckles against his mouth and looks, at long last, like it's this that offers him solace. "Okay," Bucky mutters. "Well, that's -- good."

"Yeah. I -- I mean, are... you?" It's a ridiculous question to ask, Steve knows, with Bucky's lips at his cracking skin. "Interested?"

Bucky's eyes roll up to his. He lets go of Steve's hand and reaches, slowly, shakily, until his fingers brush under the hem of Steve's shirt. He traces at his hip, slow and learning, and closes the last distance between them. 

"Nah," he rasps. "I was just wondering."

Then Bucky pitches his head into Steve's shoulder and _laughs_ , and it's the best sound he's heard in years. Steve holds his hand in Bucky's hair and Bucky's still terrified, Steve can tell from the way his palm seeks comfort from his skin -- by the way his lips drag over his neck as though seeking -- but it's still so good, and that's-- 

"I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here, Steve," he mutters.

"I... am okay with that."

An incredulous sound; it feels like a prayer. " _Why?_ "

That nervous laugh is thrilling in Steve's chest again, god damn him. For all he's supposed to be the steady one, he's having a tough time getting it down. "Well, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing either."

Bucky's lips brush over Steve's neck, open-mouthed, and whether accidental or otherwise Steve knows his intentions then. 

Desire leaves him dizzy. He buys time for reasons unknown. "We've done this before," he says. 

Laughter pulls thick and strangled out of Bucky's throat, and Steve tilts Bucky's chin up to feel the heat on his lips. "Guess so," he says, and Steve's hand rests at the back of his head. 

It's _intoxicating_ , here, with Bucky pressed against him; Steve doesn't care to hold out long.

He slots his lips over Bucky's in seconds, devoted as he feels.

Sound -- strangled, unintentional -- lives and dies in Bucky's throat. His fist clenches and pulls Steve in. Heat fires up in Steve's gut as hot as he's ever felt it, but he refuses to rush this. He runs his tongue slow over Bucky's lower lip; tastes familiar copper where Bucky's teeth have torn nervous strips from his skin. Steve takes it in -- slow, taking, giving, leaving Bucky clinging to him for ground. 

For the first time since Bucharest, there's no reason to rush. There's no reason to run; no wolf at the door to hound them. Steve's fingers trace over the back of Bucky's neck, follow along his shoulder; slip under his hooded sweatshirt and find the jut of muscle and bone, taking advantage of surplus time. 

For all he knows _himself_ to be changed, he has barely learned Bucky -- _this_ Bucky. Not in the way he wants. Not in the level of detail he's wished he's had for the last long, endless, sleepless months. He has never drawn this body -- not with a pencil; not with his hands. He intends to do it now.

"I missed you," Steve says, before he knows he has.

"Yeah?"

"You miss me?"

Bucky's seeking fingers are answer enough, but he says, "I just saw you like five minutes ago, Rogers."

To hear him joke. An ache, a weight, a reprieve. "You know what I mean."

Bucky shows him what he remembers. "Hasn't been that long for me."

Steve makes a sound he doesn't waste time trying to name. Bucky's stepping back, leading Steve to follow. He hits the wall and there's that sound again, the one from Bucky's chest that lights Steve afire, and so Steve spreads his fingers wide as he can at Bucky's back, taking as much of him under them as Steve can fit. Bucky kisses him whole, slow, steady, leaving Steve to lean into him where he's pressed against the wall, and one of Steve's hands tilts Bucky's chin back, allowing Steve to mouth at his jaw, too led by raw passion at the smell of him, the feel of him, the _sound_ of him to beat back the grind of his voice as he does it. 

Bucky's back bends under Steve's injured hand. Their breaths shudder out hard; it's the only thing Steve can hear. Steve draws Bucky's jaw from every angle with his mouth, with dipping teeth, and Bucky _keens_ with it, enraptured.

"Too fast?" Steve mutters.

"God, no," Bucky gasps.

Steve's mouth closes soft over the slant of Bucky's throat, and Bucky looks to the ceiling, seemingly overcome. "I don't want to press," Steve says, "when you've had this kind of day."

"Jesus Christ. Don't be stupid."

Steve presses nosing kisses to some point behind his ear, at the pulse at his neck; briefly loses track of the conversation. "Uh, god, I'm paying attention. That mean you want this?"

The increment Bucky moves his hips is next to nothing, but the feeling crashes between them like a wave. Bucky's face is alight with it; he cants his jaw, swallows it down. "I'm not used to needing... this."

"Jesus," Steve says. "Okay. Um, well. Do you remember -- god, this feels like a dangerous road now."

"If I don't remember we talk about something else, who gives a fuck."

A gust of a laugh from somewhere deep in him. "Okay. Do you, um, remember, the time I came home from that fight and I didn't even get a hit in, nobody did, he just wrenched my arm and held me against the wall until someone came out and--"

"Ah yeah," Bucky says, grinning with the full joy of remembrance, or of Steve under his hand. "Wanted to buy that guy a drink."

"For not hitting me, or for leaving me that riled up?"

"Both."

"Well, I'm saying there's precedent."

Bucky swallows to the ceiling, apparently still lost to desire. "New to me. You here, this _stupid_ body, I just…"

Steve's mouth at his neck. "Want. Me."

A crack in his voice. "Yeah."

Steve nods his interest. "Huh," he says; then he thumbs Bucky's lip out from between his teeth and catches it in his mouth. 

Steve wants to forget everything that isn't this. With Bucky's elbow hooked around his neck, it feels like one of those moments they were never supposed to get. Silence builds around them, as though the world was giving itself over just to them, and all they can hear is the sound of their haggard breaths, the racing beats of their hearts, until nothing else remains. 

For all their past, Steve's not sure they've ever done this before: stood in what they've built and _felt it_. It is an indulgence, something delivered from the frantic realities to which they've been too long accustomed. One of Steve's hands slips under Bucky's shirt, scans up the line of his back, slips beneath the waistband of his sweatpants, and Bucky leans so hard against him, that these expressions, however indulgent, turn out not to be enough.

"Bed," Steve mutters, still holding at Bucky's back as he steps backward.

"Yeah," Bucky says, and his fingers lock in Steve's hair as he forces his mouth to disengage, as the muscles of his brow collapse, as he matches every step. Steve turns him, leans him against the bed; they shift slowly backward, Steve unable or unwilling to stop pressing his lips over hot skin, Bucky equally unwilling to let go of Steve's shirt, until he thinks to pull it off. 

Steve's hand shifts Bucky's hips a little lower under him; he leans up, and it's a revelation, the way Bucky ruts against him. Steve fights a smile at Bucky's aborted groan, at the way his head turns back, and he can fight the smile but it's too tempting not to act. Steve sets about mouthing over his neck, his throat, down to his collarbone, pausing to push Bucky's shirt high on his chest.

He moves his mouth slow over his ribs, one at a time, and Bucky makes another sound, higher, tighter, as though overcome. "This beard," Bucky says, guttural, "is doing things to me, Steve."

This, Steve already knows. Bucky's hips keep canting up, erection rutting against Steve's stomach. His fingers are tight in Steve's hair as though to hold him in place and it's so fucking good, Bucky's hips keep moving, he is rutting himself to near-completion; Steve looks down, pulls at his waistband, and nearly whites out to see him so hard, the head of his cock pink and leaking.

Steve's hand stills his hips. He shuts his eyes hard, breathing out a laugh. "Bucky," he says, and looks him dead in the eye. "Is this how you want to come?"

Bucky's breath breaks in his throat. "No."

"You don't sound sure."

"Well, maybe I wouldn't fucking mind it."

Steve laughs again, overjoyed, as Bucky struggles to get his eyes to focus. "You love this stupid body _that much_?"

Bucky's desperate for it, his hips move of their own volition -- or try, at least, hindered by Steve's staying hand. "God damn you."

"You remember that time when you came home--"

Bucky groans. His head tips back; his back stays arched. "You gonna do this _now_?"

"--from the war the first time, and you were _done_ , Bucky, you were--" Steve dips his head, mutters the word against the taut skin of Bucky's chest, " _so done_ with everything, I'd never seen you so exhausted, you collapsed into that chair like it was the first time you'd let your guard down in _months_ \--"

"Oh, _fuck._ " 

So he does remember. Steve _laughs_ , delirious and elated. "I didn't make you do anything, remember that? I took off your hat and undid your pants and I sat on your cock right there in that chair, and meant to do all the work but you _couldn't_ , after a while, you wanted me so bad, you just held me there and fucked into me like your hips were paced by a machine, Bucky, oh, _Bucky,_ I--"

He says it because Bucky's been moving his hips against him in staccato bursts and he's been silent except for those sticking sounds in his throat, and it takes him a second but then he _stills_ , he tilts his head forward and holds Steve's gaze with an open mouth and steadying breaths. 

Steve loves his control about as much as he loves wearing it away.

"Take what you need, Bucky." Steve shifts his way backward, sets his mouth at his hip, beneath his navel, an inch below that as he tugs his pants away. "Take everything. It's yours."

When he runs his tongue over the head of Bucky's cock, all that's left to do is seal his lips when Bucky groans and cants his hips into his mouth, again and again, fingers curled in Steve's hair.

When Bucky threatens to shake apart _this_ time -- this time, Steve smiles.

  


  


  


  
**D E P R E S S I O N**  
_(and bargaining, and hateful routine, and throwdown fury, and horrific acceptance, and--)_  
_ january 2017 _  


  


It takes work to find joy. Even in the moments in between.

Steve actually wonders what's going to happen when they're done here -- whether Bucky will be able to stand to look at him. He strives to accept it when Bucky starts spending more time on his own, hoping it'll contribute to an outcome that isn't _that_. Terrified or helpless, Steve encourages the silences that Bucky starts. He spends hours locked away in his head, turning the pages to a book he's already read, waiting for the situation to change, somehow, of its own accord.

It never does. They work together on a daily basis in solemnity and with great intimacy, both of them reaching out, knowing there are things about this they would not be able to face without the other. But it is an intimacy of desperation, of necessity. They make slow, agonizing progress. Days, then weeks begin to wear on. Steve stops bringing up things he remembers in casual conversation. The language of memory is so much required when they're working through the awful, indescribable consequences of torture that it begins to sound wrong to say it any other time. "Remember" is the first urgent word Steve reaches for when he's trying to bring Bucky back from whatever absent place he retreats to, when they lock themselves in that drudging, sterile room and force themselves to this. He won't use it in the interim. Not if they're to build something in the present.

But it's hard. It's so hard. Years spent reminiscing, and now--

Steve's favourite memories become markers for Bucky's ruin. To know Bucky's first and only love has been Steve, as he admitted on that rooftop in 1936, is now to remember Bucky half-collapsed and screaming through a clenched jaw as he fights for control. To recall how Bucky once read an entire book on Greek culture and belief just because Steve liked it is now to only barely catch him when Bucky pitches forward, finally driven to unconsciousness by the effort to persevere. 

They spend days circling through each memory again afterwards, repeating ad nauseum until Bucky merely flexes against the thought of it and blinks up at Steve with tense white fingers, blood drained from him but wholly himself.

This is new victory: Bucky merely ill at the thought of him, rather than destroyed. This is the new paradigm for a good day.

It's hard. It is so, so, so, _so_ \--

But it is not all like this. It could not be, or they would never endure. Bucky had been right to ask for moderation. They spend short hours each day trying not to rip themselves in half and spend the rest of it trying to exist, learning the dimensions of their lives now free from orders. 

In a way, it works. It very nearly works. 

Still, Steve doesn't blame him as Bucky spends more and more time alone. If it's difficult for Steve to have these memories tainted, it must be a thousand times worse for Bucky to remember them for the first time and to immediately fight against the things he most hates -- to be brought to ruin, to feel ill and hateful, as though these things are part of their relationship as much as is affection. 

Understanding this does not make Steve feel less hopeless. So often is he left to hang back in uselessness and watch as Bucky disappears into his room, crashing audibly around, driven at last to violence by the sheer injustice of it. The day T'Challa introduces them to a training and boxing gym, spacious and well-equipped, is the day they each start to breathe a little easier -- knowing they each have somewhere to go to fight, to rage, to scream until their voices run ragged. 

They even start to spar, when they don't feel like seething alone, and this in itself is a help -- finding ways to express closeness and vent aggression in one. 

But it's nothing compared to the first time Bucky fucks him facedown into the judo mat, when Steve thinks it's the first time he's felt proper release in years.

So these are the ways they find to stay close, even as they strive to take space. Bucky is, among other things, still blessedly fascinated by Steve's body. Seeming to unearth questions he's had since the war, he constantly seeks to touch and explore every part of him, as though looking at him will no longer do. Steve couldn't be more grateful; he offers of himself freely, reaches out whenever it seems right to do so. But even then it is not always enough; from time to time Bucky still picks up his fingers and pastes them over some part of him, covering his neck or his hip or sometimes his heart, as though to say, _make me feel something good_. Steve is always happy, beyond it, to oblige. 

This part -- the comfort -- feels easy. It feels _right_ to him, somehow. It starts to heal the hurt they're forcing through. With the pressures of every day building on them, forcing them small, they fight in every way they can to let love and goodness take up at least as much space as the pain.

Part of this is establishing new metrics of trust, new ways of expressing themselves. Steve thinks he understands, now, why Bucky used to put up with how Steve would stare at him. He'd always be telling him to hold still, transcribing his features, telling him he was art, and now that it's Steve who's the subject, he finds it _intoxicating_. He once wakes up from a post-sex nap to find Bucky sitting cross-legged on the bed, watching his own hand as it slowly palms down the muscles of Steve's back, finding the low curve of his waist; following the rise of his glutes, then tracing its way back again.

It's hypnotic. It is deeply fucking sensual. Steve watches Bucky from the nest of his arms as he watches his own movements; as his lips break apart, as he runs three fingers in the small of his back.

"Buck?" Steve asks, soft and warm with sleep.

"Jesus, Steve," says Bucky. He looks at from some serene place and a new bridge forms between them, spans the gap; makes the chasms separating them so much more bearable. "You."

At the end of the day, Steve thinks, they at least have this -- the ability to find each other, to reach out and say: _You._

They make a point of it, of making sure they don't find themselves marooned in a sea of agony. From time to time, respite feels total. There are the moments when Bucky drops to his knees, driven by the need to feel wanted, taking Steve into his mouth in something like reverence; there are the moments when they are curled up, reading or pretending to, watching TV or trying, and Steve's hand starts to collect Bucky's hair against his palm, pulling it back, fingers working at his scalp as Bucky drifts off to sleep. Even on the off nights, when one of them is too angry and too unwilling to expose the other to it, still they crawl into bed together the next morning, bringing soft lips and warm hands. They prioritize this ritual, of pulling the other into the core of him, as though to set a precedent for the day -- to promise to evoke good things, to remember why they've bothered to survive.

They make comfort as much of their lives as is the horror. 

This, at least, they have the power to do.

  


  


  


After a while, even the comforts become dangers. 

There remain forces too strong for them to touch. Steve feels an old lethargy start to drag in his bones. With every day that passes -- with every new terrible thing they unearth -- he opens his eyes and starts to fall. There are mornings he wakes up to find Bucky there beside him, to find they're in Wakanda, and he shuts his eyes again, wishing they were somewhere, anywhere, else. 

He drifts. Bucky doesn't fight it; lies with him, even when he falls back asleep. Steve couldn't say if Bucky sleeps too. He's not sure Bucky sleeps much at all. It's hard to rouse him, when he does. Some days Steve crawls into bed when Bucky doesn't want to wake up and sleeps with him, through to the afternoon, until Bucky sits upright in his usual way -- startled and afraid and surprised to see Steve there. 

Steve pulls him in. They get a later and later start. Each of them becomes less and less willing to get up, less willing to disentangle from the warmth of the other, from the threads they're pulling to mend their hearts. But neither of them is immune to reality. They name it, on the day they don't manage to drag themselves out of bed until four o'clock. They strategize. They achieve together what Steve would not alone. They start to say aloud the things that are worth getting out of bed -- the prospect of a hot meal, of catching up on the cultural benchmarks they each have lists for getting through, of spending time _apart_ , or together in silence, or tangled naked in the shower, in the gym, in the kitchen. 

It works, to an extent. They both tear through the suite's coffee supply, for the warmth as much as in hopes of a boost. Every once in a while they collapse onto a sofa and talk about the good things, but it always devolves into more lost momentum, into making each other feel good, only good, for something good, please, "please, Bucky, can't we just for _today_ \--"

Every day, in the end, they sit down and do the things they set out to do. Eventually. If sometimes not until well after dark.

Until Steve gets stuck between two memories he doesn't want to bring forth.

The trouble is that to date, all of the memories they've discussed have been good ones. They've worked through four instances of Bucky falling in love, of being in love; of when Steve had loved him and little had hurt.

Now he has: the day Bucky left him, or the day Bucky died.

"What if we just…" It's a whisper against Bucky's shoulderblades. "Didn't do this today."

Bucky moves slowly, limbs still heavy in the molasses of sleep. "That bad, huh."

"I don't like the available options."

"Well, it's been _such_ a walk in the park so far, I could see why a change of pace might--"

"We could try to crack the ones I don't know."

Steve can almost hear his face crumple with distaste. "How?"

"Concepts. Word association. I give a synonym to the actual word and we try to reminisce until we hit on something."

"God. How long will that take?"

"Let's see. Break down seventeen years of memories, about three of which I wasn't even present for… we can probably skip the first decade or so, given the contents…"

"I know you're trying to be ironic, but give me a straight answer when it comes to hacking my own mind, would you?"

"Maybe days. Maybe an hour. We won't know until we try."

Bucky takes this information in carefully. Dread pulses in Steve in the intervening time. 

"Steve."

"Yeah."

"I'm gonna ask you something, and I need you to be fucking honest with me on this. Don't try to shield me from reality."

"Okay."

"Do you -- trust me?"

A shaking breath; Bucky's fingers against his thigh. "Yes," Steve says, and it sounds as honest as it feels.

Bucky nods, accepting. "Do you trust me enough to--" He pauses to swallow; Steve's heart rate spikes in seconds. "To _not_ put me back in that fucking room while we try to talk this through."

Steve's eyebrows fly up. Hope, briefly, soars. "That what you want?"

"I want to stop feeling like I'm living in a goddamn institution. I can't take the thought of sitting in that... _nothing_ chamber and running through goddamn concepts from our lives for hours or days at a time until something finally takes. Just seeing that place makes me sick, I can't even identify at this point whether it's the memory that's even causing the--"

"Bucky," Steve says, pulling him closer against him. "Okay."

Bucky tenses. "Okay?"

"Okay. Let's just... hang out. Around here, in the kitchen, whatever. We'll live a day and brainstorm while we do... things. We'll make brownies."

A beat, then -- "Brownies, huh?"

"I don't know how to make brownies. It's just an example."

"Straight from your mother."

Steve smiles, maybe for the first time in days. "Guess so."

Bucky takes a few moments to think, but then, at last, says -- "Okay."

"Yeah?"

"I don't think… what we've been doing is sustainable." He clears his throat. "For much longer."

"No." Steve pulls him closer in. "Me neither."

"So… you're okay?"

"I'm okay."

"I, um… okay. Fucking brownies." 

A curative silence, fleeting and hopeful.

Then Bucky gives Steve's thigh one last squeeze and rolls out of bed. "So what's the concept for today?" 

In the diffused glow of the room, Bucky is cast in a peculiar blue, giving detail to the ropes of his muscles that Steve aches to draw but prefers to touch. "Lighting," Steve says, as hopeless as he ever is, and smiles.

Bucky hardly misses the implication. He scowls, but puts on a bit of a show anyway, facing him, stretching deliberately, as he steps into clothes. "Guess we'll be making brownies for the next eighty years, then."

  


  


  


The batter spills. Bucky's fist bunches in Steve's shirt as he throws him hard against the wall, and Steve's up on his toes.

There's smoke in the room when Steve says, calmly, against the knuckles at his throat, "I never wanted to ask you for your reports." The brownies are burning when he says, "I never wanted to hear about what this wretched war made you do. You have to know that, Bucky, I was your commanding officer by fluke. I was never meant to give you orders, and I am so, so _sorry_ , I'm _so sorry_ , I will _never_ do it again, Bucky, you have to believe--"

Bucky puts him down. He blinks his way back. And for a second, through the smoke, the air smells fresh. 

Then it's Steve's hand in Bucky's shirt when Bucky's fist pounds against his chest, not in violence but in pain, in horror, in remorse and in guilt. It smells of burning when Steve holds Bucky against him on the floor, muttering "daybreak, Рассвет," again and again, then "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so fucking sorry," and it's letting the brownies burn to a crisp; it's the lock of Steve's knuckles where they're clenched at his back, somewhere past concern and into relief at the heave of Bucky's shoulders, lost to sobbing catharsis.

They don't try to bake again, but they don't return to the nothing chamber, either.

If progress is offered in jagged, crumbling shards, it is still -- they admit -- something like progress.

  


  


  


"Before we met in DC," Steve says one morning, staring at the ceiling. "When's the last time you saw me?"

Bucky's there beside him, doing just the same. "Newspapers. Action figures."

"I mean in person."

Bucky thinks for a long, long time, then -- "We were planning to hit that train."

"In '44."

"Yeah. Schmidt was there..."

"And then?"

When Bucky doesn't move, doesn't speak, Steve turns his head. 

Bucky stares at nothing, in haunted silence. "Is that when I…?"

Steve doesn't need to say anything. He can practically hear Bucky putting the pieces together.

Bucky kicks his feet off the bed and bends nearly in half, back curved in transparent agony. "Buck," Steve says, but Bucky throws an arm behind him, fingers splayed wide as though to hold his words at bay.

"I don't think I can do this today."

Steve lets out a slow, shaking breath. "Okay. It is one of them."

"I know it's fucking one of them."

"You let me know when you're ready."

"Oh, god."

"Bucky."

"Fuck, Steve. I don't want to remember it."

"I know." Steve sets two fingertips over one of Bucky's protruding vertebrae. 

Bucky shrugs him off and propels forward, chest heaving. He's half a room away. The curtains are pulled. It's too dark and not dark enough, and Bucky's staring at him like he did this himself.

"Were you there?" he asks, destroyed.

Steve blinks, brought to the peculiar calm of abject hatred of the facts. "Yes."

"You watched me lose my arm?"

"I -- no." His breath shakes. "I don't want to say any more, Bucky, if you're not ready for this."

Bucky backs into a chair and sets a hand over his mouth. Staring at Steve, naked, rigid, horrified -- it's clear to Steve at once that he already remembers.

"You weren't in the room," Bucky gravels, when Steve's roaring sorrow starts to subside. "When they took off the rest of my arm. Here. After Stark."

Steve shakes his head. "No."

"They basically... re-activated the hardware, shoulder to nervous system, so I don't experience atrophy. To make it easier to adjust. When I do want a new prosthetic."

Steve's gaze flits to the sock that always covers his shoulder; that seems to stay on no matter what, through sparring, through his violent reactions, even through sex. "That's good."

"It -- the problem is, Steve, that this fucking _thing_ makes me think it's _there_. I look over and…" He gestures at nothing, perfectly proving the point. He shakes his head and then buries it again, lost in some grief Steve's never seen from him. Not on this. "It doesn't feel the same, but I spend so much time feeling disconnected anyway…"

Steve nods.

"I lived with that arm for years," he gravels. "It was part of me. But I understand how I lost it. And I understand how it got -- installed." Bucky swallows, disgust flitting over his features. "But there's a lot I haven't processed. I remember being dragged across the snow when I was left for dead with half my arm not there--"

"Jesus, Bucky."

"But I don't remember losing it. How the fuck am I supposed to…"

Then Bucky's expression drops into familiar, vacant slack, and Steve propels himself out of bed at once.

"You want to finish now that we've started?" Steve asks him, trying to keep him engaged, grabbing and pulling on the nearest pair of sweatpants with as much haste as he can manage.

"No." But Bucky's pressing the heel of his hand into his eyes, and Steve knows better than to think they have any kind of choice anymore. He intuits the need for a receptacle of some kind and throws it at Bucky's feet, then steps up onto the arm of the chair and sits on its back, other foot setting at Bucky's side, fingers raking gently through his hair to pull it out of his face. 

"Ready?" Steve asks.

" _No._ "

"We gotta ride this, Bucky."

" _Fuck_ you."

"Mission was going fine." Steve soothes him as best he can. "We infiltrated the train."

Bucky swears a blue streak and leans over himself, letting Steve's hands coax him through it.

"Tried to find Schmidt. Wound up in a firefight. Guy showed up with a pack full of rockets…" Steve places a palm on him, whole, to keep a point of contact. "Blew a hole in the side of the train. Then blew you out of it."

Steve opens his mouth to tell him the rest: about how he held on; about how Steve should have saved him. How he should have protected him. Should have reached further, faster -- 

But he falters. His courage fails him, _again._ Before he can get a grip on himself, Bucky says: "Word."

If he hesitates, it's only to clear his throat. "Freight car," Steve says, and keeps stroking at Bucky's hair; it's the absolute goddamn least he can do. "Товарный вагон."

It takes nearly no time. In that respect it's the easiest.

In the way Bucky quietly steps away from him and out of the room without so much as a backward glance when he recovers enough to keep his feet, it is significantly the hardest.

  


  


  


"Do you remember," Bucky had asked him, hat bunched in his hands and a waver in his voice, "when you snuck out of my house that morning and I followed you and wound up at that underground dance hall watching folks swinging their brains out at four in the morning?"

Steve had been too weak to do anything other than look at him and smile, and Bucky had had to look away from him, then, peering around at the hospital instead.

"Whaddya say we do that again now, huh? Just blow this joint and go dancing, you and me."

The thrill of the laugh in Steve's lungs had turned into a cough that never stopped and Bucky had stood as though physically shocked when nurses flew in and shooed him away. Steve didn't remember what happened after that except that he had an image of Bucky's pale and worried face in his head for the days it took for Bucky to come back -- something he could only find it in him to do after Steve had stabilized again. Steve never forgot the flex of his jaw or the pink rims around his eyes, and when Bucky did walk in, stopping dead as though petrified, Steve brightened as well as he could.

"Hey, Buck." Bucky blinked at him and Steve tried for a smile, obstructed by some shapeless shame at being sick in the first place. "Are you okay? I'm sorry I scared you last time."

Bucky had given a burst of laughter without any according smile. "Am _I_ okay? Rogers, you nearly--"

And Steve had known he'd nearly died; it was the sickest he'd ever been. His Ma had told him she'd caught Bucky in some withdrawn crevasse of the hospital clinging to the wall and sobbing like he'd never recover, so Steve knew that Bucky knew it too. 

But Steve had never stared a gift miracle in the mouth even once, so he swallowed some of the so-called "food" the nurses kept bringing him and nudged the plate toward Bucky.

"Want some gruel?" Steve had asked him, and remembered to smile. "It's awful."

And Bucky never showed fear, so maybe that's why Steve hadn't understood the look on his face until later. "Sure," Bucky said. It seemed to take all of his courage to take a single step closer, but then he took another after it, so in the end it must have been enough. "Can always count on you for all the best gruel, Rogers."

"Enough to last you a lifetime in this joint."

Bucky's eyes had flitted to Steve's and forced a horrible smile in silence.

"Listen," Steve muttered, looking shyly at his plate. "Thanks for coming back."

"Steve," he'd said; and he'd blinked hard at him for several long seconds before finally reaching up to ruffle Steve's hair. "Please. You still owe me for lunch. You know damn well money's tight these days."

And Steve had grinned and nudged at the plate again. "I'm paying you back right now."

"Great," Bucky said. "Thanks."

"Be thankful for what the Lord provides for us, Bucky."

And Steve said it with the expectation of hearing Bucky's groan, of watching him lean back in his chair and cover his face with the agony of 'that Catholicism lark,' but he only shut his eyes and looked to the floor. "Believe me, Rogers," he must have said, though Steve had been certain he'd misheard; but before he could ask the moment had passed, with Bucky explaining the details of his math homework that he'd already finished, and Steve had only chosen to be thankful that he'd done that at all when he'd so clearly thought Steve was going to die.

  


  


  


Steve doesn't know what he believes these days. Sometimes, inexplicably, that's the hardest thing to bear.

  


  


  


"This place is prison, Steve."

Steve hasn't seen Bucky in hours. He disappeared into the gym after they relived his death and Steve watched him grappling with a heavy bag, forcing ferocious shots, before deciding he was best left alone.

"We keep choosing this," Bucky continues. There's no malice in his voice; only honesty, tone forced deep by the strain from yelling. "We keep forcing ourselves into bad situations we can't escape from, unless we pull the plug on this whole endeavor."

Steve nods, slowly, putting his book aside and trying not to expose the vice pressing at his chest. "Okay."

"You don't agree."

"I don't agree this is a prison. The fact that we're choosing this--"

"It's not a free choice, Steve. The best option is still fucking abysmal when every option in the list is bad."

Steve shrugs. "Okay. Well, I choose this."

Bucky shakes his head. "You feel obligated."

"No, Bucky. I don't. I want to be here."

Bucky looks at Steve with even concern, and it seems so out of place here that Steve sits at closer attention. "That's obvious to me now," Bucky says. "You think -- you're making up for letting me fall off that train."

Steve freezes, briefly, waiting for Bucky to react to the memory, but he only swallows against a wince and stares steadily on. "No, I don't," Steve says. "I'm--"

"You don't 'want to be here'. I see you drowning every day."

He is startled to hear it. "I'm not _drowning_."

"Come on, Steve. How long have we known each other? Don't lie to me."

"If I'm struggling, Bucky, it's _nothing_ compared to--"

"Jesus, don't say that. Rogers: we are bad for each other."

It's effective; it's a blow to the face. " _Bucky,_ " he says. He shakes his head vigorously; crosses his arms over his chest, and vehemently _chooses_ denial. "No, I'm sorry. I don't believe that."

"Right now, we are. _Right now_ , we're pulling each other down. We're…" He swallows; Steve hears a hint of desperation in his tone, but then his voice pulls steady, always steady, like he has a box for emotion at the ready. "Be realistic. You wouldn't be experiencing this if not for me."

"Jesus, Bucky," and it's a plea as much as anything. "Don't flatter yourself. You think this is the first time I've felt this way?"

Bucky stares at him a long time. Steve waits for him, trying to quell the animal fighting in his gut.

"I need a break," Bucky says, at last.

Steve opens his mouth, then closes it as he falls. "I…"

"This…" He sighs. "It's not your fault, Steve."

Steve blinks; tries to focus his eyes. "Okay?"

"None of this. Is your fault." Bucky gestures between them. "You understand? You would have lost your grip. Another inch and you'd have fallen in with me."

Static, panic, rushes in Steve's ears. "No," he says, empty.

"The most likely thing that would have happened is that _both_ our asses would be owned by Hydra right now. You got your life saved so many goddamn times, Steve. So many times you should've died and didn't. Count that as one of them."

"It wasn't. It wasn't. That was a _choice_ I made."

"Because you're a fucking survivor."

"I should have saved you."

"Fuck that noise, Rogers, I swear to god."

"If I'm a survivor then you are too."

"Then that's on me. It doesn't change the fact that you -- _Steve._ Come _on._ You were _never_ supposed to save me."

Steve knows, in one stroke, everything he means. 

He was never supposed to show up in Azzano. He was never supposed to pull him out of that Hydra base. He was never supposed to cauterize that gunshot wound that might have killed him in Italy. He was never supposed to leap after him out of that train. He was never supposed to lift that beam off him. He was never supposed to show up in Bucharest. He was never supposed to drag him out of _cryo_ \--

"You do what you can to survive," Bucky says. His hand is shoved in the pocket of his hoodie but Steve can see even still that it's clenched into a fist. "It's who you are, and as it turns out maybe it's who I am too. Maybe I got that courage from you, I don't know -- I don't want you to think that I blame you for anything about it, though, because there's not a thing about this that's your fault. For better or worse, Steve, it's just what we're about. And that's why it kills me to watch you start to come apart by making the decision to put someone else's survival first. It's not fucking like you."

"I am telling you, Bucky," Steve says, low, "there is nowhere else I could be where I would be doing anything that mattered more to me. And… I think you might actually be wrong about me. At least when it comes to you. There's not a day that goes by that I don't remember that everything you've been through was meant for me, and there's nothing I wouldn't do to take it--" 

"Steve, Jesus _Christ._ Don't say another goddamn word." 

"Who do you think is listening?" 

"For someone who allegedly still believes in providence, I'm not sure you have a leg to stand on there." 

Steve shrugs, angry and petulant. "Sorry my beliefs offend you."

"No you're goddamn not. Don't feed me bullshit and tell me it's pie." 

It _sounds_ like Bucky, _Christ_ ; Steve can't help his tight smile. 

Bucky blinks his gaze away and shakes his head; the argument filters out of the room through cracks in the floor, through cracks in their plasticine veneers. "Listen," he says, forcing evenness. "It is incredibly stupid of you -- it is _stupid_ , Rogers, just straight up just fucking ludicrous -- to think this was meant for you. This wasn't meant for _anybody._ You are an idiot. Stop thinking that. Stop it right now, I swear to god."

Steve sighs and looks at his toes; sees the way they move, marvels at their warmth. Given the tone of this argument Steve feels as though he may as well be five foot four. "Well, Bucky, I'm gonna show up to this 'prison' of yours every day regardless." He looks up, stubborn and steeled. "You haven't been here for the last few years, so let me fill you in on what else I've been doing with my time. Instead of aligning myself with an organization for good, I wound up doing dirty work for Hydra for two years -- for _Hydra_ , Bucky, masquerading as S.H.I.E.L.D. I somehow missed that for two _entire_ years because I was too far up my own ass to pay proper attention. Then I re-founded the Avengers, which caused so much carnage and destruction that the nations of the world actually tried to put us on a leash--"

"This is exactly what I'm talking about. You have never allowed failure to set you back before. Giving all that up--"

"It's not _failure_ , Bucky! It's loss of faith!"

Bucky's chin raises. They stare at each other for a long time.

"Okay," Bucky says. "That, I understand."

"And… I don't know much, anymore." Steve shrugs loosely. "I don't know which way is up. I don't even know if I know what's right in the world. I need time to figure it out. But I know that helping you is right. It feels good, and just, and like I wasn't pulled out of the ice for nothing. You say this is a prison but I don't feel that, Bucky. This feels like direction to me."

"I'm not a direction."

"I know that. You told me not to put that on you and I'm doing my best. My feelings about who was meant for what aside, you gotta know, Buck, that you're not -- work, or business, or a project for me. I just want to help. I just -- love you. That's the fact of the matter. I love you and I want to make life easier for you. For me, too. Hell, for anyone, _someone_ , for a goddamn change, instead of making it _worse_."

"But--" A crack, finally; a tick of emotion. "This is breaking you, Steve."

Steve shakes his head and gives a slow sigh. "No it isn't, Bucky. I was broken first."

Another silence. "I guess I--" He gives a hint of a smile, but it's the most tragic thing Steve's ever seen. For the first time he thinks he understands why people always tell him not to do that. "It's just that you were always the strong one."

"No I wasn't. You were."

"I was a mess, Rogers."

"Then I guess we've just always showed up for each other anyway." He sighs, feeling terrible. "Sorry you're stuck with me, Bucky. But this stupid, awful thing... it feels right to me to be here to help you through it, if you'll let me stay. It's not a prison to me."

Bucky looks at him. Sadness pulls at his features, battling with control. "I'm not sorry you're here, Steve."

Steve sighs and runs a hand over his face. "I know."

"But... it still doesn't change what I came here to say. That I need a break. From this." He swallows; his face falls to the floor. "From you."

Steve falls and falls anew. "Can I, um…" He fights the lump in his throat. " _Why?_ " 

A break in it, killing them both. "Because of..." Bucky shrugs. "The nature of the beast. This being about you. In a way."

"I…" Steve nods. "Okay. Yeah."

"I wanted to talk about something that wasn't indoctrination this morning. I wanted to talk about my fucking arm, and we got sucked into the indoctrination shit anyway."

"I'm sorry. We can--"

"No. Shut up and listen. It's because it was you I was talking to, Steve. It couldn't have gone another way." He shakes his head, again and again. "I love you too, you know that? I don't know if I could do this without you." 

"Okay." 

"I'm not trying to be rid of you, I don't want you to... It's just that there's too many layers to this, it's too fucking complex. I don't want… I never wanted this to become…" He sighs bitterly and uses his hand to brush irrelevance out of the air. "There are too many things I'm trying to work through. I'm saying I need a break from the indoctrination shit so I can work on some of the other shit. For a while."

"And that means a break from me."

Bucky's looking at him so steady, so clear. Steve doesn't understand it, given his fractured voice. "For right now. Yeah."

"Okay."

"I'm -- sorry."

"Don't… don't. Bucky. This was always your show." Steve looks up and tries to look as steady as Bucky does. "Do you want me to leave?"

"No," Bucky says -- low, immediate. "Please don't."

Relief conflicts with heartbreak in his chest. "Okay."

"I mean… it's your call. You can go if you want."

"I don't."

"Okay. I, um…" Bucky looks away. "I don't know how long I'll need."

"That's fine. Take what you need, Buck. It's all yours." He takes a steadying breath. "You're -- okay? About living with the -- you know, last words in your head for a while?"

Bucky nods. "I've thought about it. I'm, uh... getting stronger."

Steve almost smiles. "I noticed that."

"I trust the integrity of the palace." Steve hears the rest in the brief pause that follows: _As much as I trust anything._ "If there was a Hydra agent around they'd have activated me long before now. I think hitting pause..." He shrugs. "I'd rather live with it than self-destruct with you."

Steve isn't sure how to take that. "Okay."

Bucky stands halfway across the room, and there's an air of finality but neither of them moves. 

"So," Steve says, unable to stand the silence. "How do you want to do this?"

"We, um, keep separate rooms." Bucky looks away -- awkward, upset, but still sounds steady, looks steady too. "Don't use the training room at the same time. Avoid kitchen, living room at the same time…"

"Jesus. That total? This is -- a _break_ , break?"

"We have to stop--" He gestures between them, moving his hand in a circle. "This."

Steve gives a short sigh and forces acceptance through the feeling of illness. "I'll make a bit of noise when I'm moving around, then."

Bucky nods and looks sad. "That would help."

Then it's a horrible, aching second before Bucky steps forward and strides across the room; before he tips Steve's head back with fingers at his jaw and kisses him with a terrible softness, full of all the things they never take the time to say.

Steve holds him there; accepts Bucky's lips at his mouth, at his temple, at his brow, and tries to keep his chest from caving in. 

Then before Steve can hold him back, Bucky's pulled away and halfway left the room.

Steve doesn't move for a long, long time.

  


  


  


  
**B A R G A I N I N G**  
_(by himself, with himself, in begrudging isolation)_  
_ february 2017 _  


  


Weeks pass. Steve sleeps until dark, hateful of the sun.

Avoiding Bucky is -- awful. It's awful. He hates it so much it constricts his lungs. He spends more time angry than he cares to admit. He tries to read only to find himself listening, waiting for a sign that Bucky is near.

But Bucky never comes. Steve knows better than to think Bucky wouldn't know exactly where he is at all times. That's awful, too. Steve prefers sleep for all it allows him to -- stop. Just, all of it, stop.

He watches a lot of stupid television. He eats eggs and protein bars and spends hours at the gym, long after Bucky's gone. On the rare occasions their paths do cross Steve snaps at him, blaming him unfairly and yet struggling to care.

"Stop," Bucky shouts at him, furious, when Steve passive-aggressively pours himself a bowl of cereal while Bucky's trying to cook.

Steve leaves, after that. And he does stop. For all he may be petty, he also knows how to follow orders.

As time passes, Steve adjusts. He should have guessed he would. He spends a lot of time thinking things through, and maybe that was the entire goddamn point. He wonders where Bucky found that steadiness, when he was trying to explain he needed a break, because it's certainly not the case now. More than when they were spending time together, Steve has noticed a slip in Bucky's resolve. He's returned almost exclusively to a state of sullen anxiety -- jumping every time Steve passes, even peripherally, by the window to the gym or to sit in the sun. He spends his time in the gym shouting the activation words to himself again and again, in English, in Russian, punching with his singular hand for hours as though punishing himself through the pain that follows.

If Steve was a betting man he'd say that solitude is not serving Bucky well. But after a few weeks of this he figures out that Bucky has always been exactly this way, while Steve failed to notice. He's been putting on a show for Steve this entire damn time. His old training, his sniper instincts, have held him together when he's needed it; and now this freedom of solitude, of putting himself together for no one, is what he was asking for.

Steve allows himself a closer radius with Bucky, after that, determined to try to help without overstepping. Sometimes when he hears Bucky sobbing in the next room, Steve hangs around, if from a distance; slides down on the other side of the wall and just sits with him, sure Bucky knows he's there but never once hearing him tell Steve to leave. This lifts Steve, somehow -- knowing he can help in some small way, just by being around without pushing the envelope of what they've agreed.

Other times, it's harder to stay a step back. One morning Bucky passes him in the hallway with a polite sidestep and a pursed-lipped smile, and Steve reaches out and catches a hand -- on his _left_ elbow.

Bucky gives him a sheepish smile. The sleeves of his hoodie are rolled up, and when he flexes his hand Steve can see the way the prosthetic moves like muscle -- still metal but different from the old one, less mechanical, smoother, contiguous, as though to allow a more humane experience.

"You like it?" Steve asks, blinking through his bewilderment.

"Yeah." Bucky clenches and unclenches his hand and smiles when he sees something happen, as though still not expecting it. "It's, uh, a little different. Bit more nuanced. Keep… fumbling things. If you see a mess in the kitchen just leave it, I'll clean it up."

"Okay." Steve has a million questions and can't decide on which one to ask. "I -- are you -- did you look at the schematics? Did T'Challa provide this? Why did you choose -- _Bucky_ , I--" 

But Bucky's already backing away, and Steve feels his face fall before the rest of him follows suit.

"I'll see you soon, Steve," he says, sounding fond but awfully distant; and Steve's left to watch him go and turn back in the direction he was headed.

Over time, left to himself, seeing Bucky in his periphery, his focus improves. He sleeps less, and then more, and then less again. He wastes less energy on heavy bags and takes more walks in the garden; drinks more coffee because he's learned to like the taste and thinks back to all the years Bucky would drive him crazy by smoking like a stack.

He catches Bucky on one particularly bad day, by the looks of things, muttering furiously to himself as he goes to town on the heavy bag in the gym. Steve watches through the window, for a while, fascinated by the force behind his prosthetic, how it seems to be stronger without overpowering. But it's a mistake; he catches in the corner of Bucky's eye and he _yells_ , terrified, spinning at the sight of him, and Steve ducks out before Bucky can even finish telling him to do it.

Steve lies awake a long time that night. At some point he sits up and gets halfway to dressed, but then decides better of it and gets back into bed.

For all he's been accustomed to it, Steve realizes -- he has never done very well at being alone. 

Lying in bed, arms splayed out wide in the emptiness of the sheets, Steve realizes at once that not chasing Bucky down feels like the wrongest thing he's ever done.

  


  


  


But Bucky comes back to him, in time, and apart from being best, it might also be _better_. It's three days after Steve's long night spent trying _not_ to burst into Bucky's room whether he wants him there or not that Bucky slinks into the sitting room where Steve's with a book and does not, for once, turn back at the sight of him.

Steve looks at him, blinking mildly, taking in the way his hood's pulled over his head; the way he looks like he hasn't slept in a million years. "Buck?"

Bucky shuffles a foot. For all he has aged, he looks so young. 

"You want something?"

Bucky shakes his head. "No."

"Are you okay?"

Bucky nods, but doesn't look up; doesn't say anything more.

Steve takes a chance and holds an arm out long to the side. "Well, you look awful. Come get warm at least. We don't have to talk."

This time, Bucky does step forward, as though ashamed to need this. He collapses on the sofa next to him and puts his head in Steve's lap, eyes fluttering closed as though sleep found him at once.

"Sorry," Bucky mutters against his leg as he curls into a ball.

"Don't be," Steve says, and he smiles; he can't help it. His fingers dip under the hem of Bucky's hood and find a few strands of hair to run through, and Bucky's breath evens into sleep in what seems like instants.

  


  


  


Steve wakes, some nights later, to gentle fingers at his hip; to warm breath on his neck. He rolls over blearily, Bucky's name on his lips, and it's a second after that that he realizes it actually _is_ him; his gut swoops with an instinctive thankfulness.

"Hey," Bucky whispers, breath soft on his lips.

"Hi," Steve says, somewhat in disbelief. Bucky's hands are full on him, like he wants him for something, and as Steve remembers why this is surprising him he grips at him right back. "Are you... here?"

"I'm -- I couldn't sleep, I just… wanted you."

"Well, okay," Steve says, smiling. He pulls Bucky in, and Bucky seems to sigh with relief at the warmth, at the breadth of them. "Here I am."

"I can't sleep," Bucky says again, a whisper this time, and it's full of despair; Steve's stomach drops at once.

"Hey. Okay. Sleep here, then."

A long pause, as though there's something he's not saying.

"Bucky?"

"Can we just like. I dunno." Bucky's hand moves to cup at Steve's jaw, thumb tracing at his cheek. "Make out a little? I'm just..."

Steve swallows against the smile budding at his lips again. "Yeah, Buck," he says, "we can do that," and Bucky's lips scan over his without it quite turning into anything. "Whatever you want."

If there was a response forming on Bucky's lips it's lost to the world's softest kiss -- something far too gentle to set them afire like this, and yet it does. Bucky’s hands wends in Steve’s hair, pull tighter at his hip, and Steve shifts himself forward, just kissing a while, soft and slow. 

Bucky peels back, minutes later; presses his forehead against Steve’s, and breathes.

"How are you?" Steve mutters, scanning a thumb up by his temple.

“Bad," Bucky says.

He gives an ironic laugh. "I know what you mean."

"I just... wanted to kiss you. I dunno."

Steve nods, not bothering to fight his smile. "Okay. Not complaining."

"Is this…?"

"Yeah," Steve says, and presses his lips to the corner of Bucky's mouth. The pull between them is strong; Bucky wants to kiss him again. He teases his lips against Steve’s, and so Steve lets him; shifts Bucky's hips closer, entangles their limbs. 

Bucky's hand is possessive in his hair, drawing him deeper, and this time it's open and hot -- Bucky _wants_ with such fervor. It is familiar, in a way; it is the way he always wanted before, but there’s something to it, now, a hint less restraint. Having come here tonight, it's as though he had wanted to remember what it had been to love Steve without being afraid, and Steve _feels_ it, he fuels it, he wants so much more of it. His hand pulls Bucky's leg over his own, and Bucky shifts until there’s no space between them. Steve's hands keep him close but slide easy, gentle, over his skin — tracing soft lines, trying to repay some of the tenderness Bucky offers.

Bucky breaks the kiss, at some point; shifts, moves his mouth up to set against his brow, first pressing, then staying. “I really can't sleep," he mutters again.

Steve nods against his neck and buries his face in his shoulder.

"Even in Europe I could at least sleep a few hours at a time."

"Not even that, huh?"

"Thirty, forty minute bursts. I'm seriously losing it."

"Is it -- nightmares?"

"I…" Bucky sounds suddenly overwhelmed. "I guess so."

"I had those for a while."

Bucky clears his throat. "Hate to break it to you, Rogers, but you still do."

Steve raises his head. "What?"

"You never wake up, but you're... an intense sleeper, to say the least."

"Jesus. I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

"It can't help."

"I sleep a lot worse when you're not around."

Steve thinks he might try to smile against his shoulder, but it shatters into sadness instead. Bucky holds him tighter through an aborted sigh, lips at his brow.

"Listen," Bucky says. "I gotta ask you something."

There's a weight to it that makes Steve worried. "Okay."

“There’s -- something I’m forgetting.”

Steve freezes, then forces his muscles free again. His hands scope Bucky's shoulderblades; his lips find skin. “Okay.”

"I don't... remember the last time we fucked before the war."

"Oh." Steve's eyes spring open. "Yeah."

"You know… why."

"Yeah, Buck. I know that one."

Bucky nods, holding at Steve like he doesn't know what else to do. "I don't mean to come in here and start up again where we left off."

"No."

"I meant what I said. That I don't want this to be all we are."

"I don't think we are."

"I can't -- _fucking_ sleep."

"I know, Bucky." Steve remembers his own stint of insomnia; how he'd been desperate to remember everything he'd ever known about him. "I know."

"We don't have to talk about it now. I really did just want…"

"We can. If it'll help."

The pause is so long and intervening and full of gentle touch that Steve wonders if he isn't just going to finally fall asleep instead. But then--

"I can remember times we had sex when I came back from training," Bucky gravels, hoarse with feeling or exhaustion. "Afternoons. Then I -- left. Every time."

"Yeah," Steve says, and nods.

"That doesn't make sense to me."

"You remember the Expo?"

"I remember the Expo."

Steve doesn't understand his tone until he remembers. " _Oh._ Bucky, don't think about that."

"Hard not to."

"Stay focused on the me stuff, come on. It's a fluke you were there, that they made you kill Howard."

Bucky flinches. Steve aims to steady him. "I bring it up because we were acting weird," Steve says. "Weren't we? You remember that?"

It serves to distract him, at least. "We _were_ weird. I don't know why."

Steve detaches himself from Bucky, slowly, leaving kisses over his chest as he goes. When he's flat on his back he entwines their fingers together, and Bucky moves to his back, too, arms long between them. 

"What's the last thing you remember?" Steve sighs to the ceiling. "Between us, before that day?"

"Leave of some kind. Summer, maybe. I, uh." A tired ghost of a laugh. "I was so happy to see you I picked you up and carried you around for a while. You were pissed about it until I kissed you stupid against the wall."

"August, '41." Steve says, nodding. "You were already corporal."

Bucky takes in a breath. "I like that one."

"The memory?"

"Coming home to you was like nothing else, Rogers."

It's clear to Steve immediately just how much he doesn't remember. 

"But you left right after," Steve says. "You wouldn't stay the night."

Bucky frowns. "Hung around until it got dark though. Tried to talk you out of enlisting."

"Yeah."

"There's something not right about -- what I do remember, like I was pissed at you for loving me back. You kept saying you were gonna save my life. I didn't believe you and I didn't want to." A hard exhale. "Why didn't I stay?"

"You were afraid. Remember next leave, when you came home? End of November?"

Bucky's silent for a while, so Steve chances a glance at him. He's frowning at the ceiling, as though fighting to remember. "Vaguely. I remember seeing Ma and the girls, saying I was gonna visit you, and then--" He shuts his eyes as though pained, but the usual reaction doesn't hit. "Me leaving town again," he finishes eventually, pinching his free hand at his eyes. "Maybe a date with some dame in Manhattan? Missing you like hell, but I don't remember why, or seeing you at all.”

Steve takes a deep, steadying breath. He renews his grip on Bucky's hand. He hadn't expected this one to be buried too. "You, uh." His sentence is waylaid by a laugh, something born of the tension spreading in his chest. "I don't know how else to say this. You kinda broke my heart, Bucky."

Nothing, for a moment; then, slow, Bucky's head turns to him. "Are you -- sure?"

"Yeah, Buck. I'm sure."

" _I_ broke _your_ heart."

"Right in two."

"That can't be right."

"I'm not telling this story very well. You felt like you couldn't be with me anymore."

"That sounds like the last thing I would have said to you. I -- you were -- _Steve._ You were the only thing that made _sense_ most days."

Steve gives a shatteringly sad smile. "Maybe, Buck. But you were way too afraid to keep going the way we were."

"Afraid of _what_?"

"Of getting caught." Steve gestures to the ceiling. "Of being kicked out of the army, or worse. I think you were afraid _for_ me, too, though you never said as much."

Bucky still seems not to comprehend. "I don't see -- I wouldn't have just--"

"You didn't _just_. It took you the better part of three months to do it, maybe longer, I don't know." Steve sighs. "We've got two of them, Buck. Two words here, I think."

A horrified beat. "Jesus."

"Let me know what you want to do."

Bucky's breathing breaks hard, his hand a vice in Steve's grip.

"I have to know," he says, at long last.

"Okay then," Steve says, and rolls onto his side. "You came over." He sets a hand on Bucky's ribs, for grounding or comfort. "Mid-afternoon, as always. I was happy to see you. Obvious you were too. I only got your name out before you threw my sketchbook aside and kissed me like -- I dunno. You always had more passion than you'd ever admit." Bucky laughs, hollow. "I think it's hard for me to -- you never talked about the Army."

"I hated it," Bucky says, guttural. "I hated most of all that I was good at it."

"Every time you came home you just seemed to want to get it out of your system. Fucked me like it was the last thing you'd ever do."

"Probably thought it was."

Steve taps anxious fingers at Bucky's chest. "That time. November. You were telling me about all you had to do, like you had no time. All these dates you had lined up. And the message was clear, you know, you didn't want to spend any time there. I didn't understand why. I assumed we were just drifting apart. I couldn't stand it regardless, so I got up and went to the kitchen on the pretense of making coffee. Stupid. I didn't drink it and I knew you were leaving." 

Bucky's eyes are shut, but Steve's not idiot enough to think it's sleep. "And I came back and you were sitting over the side of the bed staring at your uniform where it was thrown over the chair like it was the worst thing you'd ever seen."

Something turns over in Bucky's chest. He withdraws; swallows hard, pressing fists against the bed. "Okay."

"You remember now."

"Fuck."

Steve takes a steadying breath and gives Bucky space. He watches him; he inhales hard against pain and hatred. "I'm so sorry, Steve," he grits out.

"Oh, Bucky. Don't do that."

"Said a lot of shitty things."

Steve gives a hedging nod. "Said things that counted more."

"Word," Bucky says, swallowing.

"I think it's -- homecoming." He shuts his eyes hard as the shudders wrack through him and, yeah, he got it right. "Возвращение домой."

Bucky turns away from him and gasps into the mattress.

"It's gonna be okay," Steve mutters, the usual mantras finding his lips. "You're safe. I trust you. It'll pass. Breathe." He watches, waiting, until he thinks a hand on his hip might help more than hinder. Bucky doesn't recoil, so Steve tests his thumb over the jut of bone, trying for something kind. "You asked me for the last time we slept together. That was it. You told me you loved me but it wasn't enough to change your mind. You gave me one more night, when I asked you to. And that was the last time."

"Oh, god," Bucky mutters.

"It's okay."

"It's _not_!" Bucky throws his feet off the edge of the bed and sits, back curved, bracing hard over himself. His voice sounds so far beyond wrecked, out of tension or agony. "You just _accepted_ that from me? You didn't _fight_? You!"

"Not you."

"Jesus _Christ_."

"I fought _for_ you. I yelled at you, the night before Stark Expo. If I'd thought it would've helped I'd have gotten out of bed and dragged you into it with me, or sat on your lap until you agreed to have me back. But it wouldn't have. You'd made up your mind, I could see that, and I couldn't take that kind of rejection -- from you." Steve swallows. "That's memory number two, Buck. If you can possibly handle it."

"Oh, _god._ " He sounds like he's going to be ill.

"I'm so sorry."

" _You're_ sorry?"

"I'm not trying to make you feel guilty. Bygones."

This, finally, brings Bucky to turn to look at him. "It is clearly not bygones, Steve!"

"It's nothing. A blip on the radar."

"Listen to you, you can't even _talk_ about it."

Steve wants to reply, but his breath is clipped short. He was never very good at lying, in the end. "Do you -- remember? The other one?"

"No." Harsh; furious. "I remember the day of the Expo, finding you fighting that giant in the alley -- oh, god, _Steve_ , is that why you were there?"

Steve grinds his teeth. Bucky groans and buries his face in his hands. "You were standoffish and I was angry but I could never figure out -- and we said goodbye like…" He sits up, abrupt. "Tell me what I said."

"Bucky," Steve says, voice low. "I don't think--"

"Steve, just--"

"I think we should wait."

"To hell with that. Do it now."

"This whole thing is -- listen. We're okay now."

"Fuck, Steve, I don't know."

A horrified beat. "You _don't_?"

"I broke your damn heart so I could feel more secure and you just--"

"Bucky, it doesn't _compare._ " He swallows, hating the way his voice sounds. "It doesn't compare to what we've been through. It didn't rank for me during the war and it doesn't rank now."

"So you're telling me," Bucky says, "that you went and got yourself big -- to try and _save me_ \-- even after I went and did that."

"Yeah. I still loved you, Bucky." He licks his lips, startled by what feels like a smile twitching across them. "And I knew you loved me. I made you tell me as much. I'd have done pretty much anything for you whether you'd pulled the plug or not." 

"You are the world's biggest idiot, Rogers."

"Well, here we are. It worked out."

It's the first hint of annoyance Steve's mustered, and it seems to be what finally brings Bucky to look at him, even as his shoulders stay squared in vigilance. 

"I'm sorry," Bucky says. He sounds so defeated.

"I know you are," Steve says. "You were then. Honestly, Bucky, I think… your concerns aside, you also thought it was the best way to keep me home." He shrugs. "I can't fault you for that. Not now. Not on this side."

Bucky runs his hands over his face; presses his fists to his eyes, then turns. "Is that what I said?"

"Not in so many words. I know you were scared of a lot of things."

Bucky takes this in stride; nods a little, presses his hands together flat. "What did I say to you?"

Steve takes a steadying breath as he looks at him. A long time must pass, because Bucky turns to look at him again, even with his back still turned away.

"We need a break, Bucky."

"Just tell me."

"We've never done two at once before. You haven't slept."

" _Steve._ "

"Shut up and just -- stay, would you? We'll tackle it tomorrow, or whenever you want. Just not right now. This is _me saying_ that _I_ don't want to do this right now. Please just -- let's sleep a while. Please. You know what happened now, you can sleep a while."

Bucky shakes his head at his knees for a long time. "Why are you trying to spare me this?" he asks eventually.

"I'm trying to spare us the illusion that life is just misery. You took time. I'm asking for a night." He holds up an arm. "Come the fuck here."

Bucky's shoulders show the shallowness of his breath. "I have trouble -- I'm having trouble."

"Then let's -- okay. You remembered breaking up with me during the war. Why it was so easy for you to pretend like we were friends? Like all we'd been all along was friends?"

"I don't think it was. Everything I remember about looking at you during the war is that I was afraid to touch you, or look at you, because of how I felt. We had other priorities, we had--" A break in his throat, now, and Steve gives him a moment before pressing a hand against his back. "We had a mission."

"You didn't."

"I did. I had the same mission as you. From start to finish, Steve, whether you were there or not, every time I went to the front -- I was doing it to protect you."

Steve's speechless, for a second. "Well," he grinds out eventually, "then we're both idiots."

"One of us was conscripted and had idiocy thrust upon him. _One_ of us got injected with a radioactive serum for sport."

"For vitality and justice, but sure."

"You _died_ , genius."

"Well, yeah, but like…" He shrugs. " _One_ time."

Bucky's face finds the ceiling. "You're right," he deadpans. "I knew a guy during the war who died three, maybe four times."

"Four-Death Thompson?" Steve nods. "Yeah, I knew him too."

By some miracle, Bucky actually smiles. 

"Come to bed, Bucky." He pulls at the covers where Bucky left them. "Get some sleep. I'll make us breakfast. We'll have a normal conversation. Eventually I'll get around to telling you about the time you tried to break up with me. It didn't take, as you can see, so it's not really much of a story anymore. But I'll tell you." Steve reaches high and brings three fingers skating over the curve of his shoulderblade. "I'll tell you, in time."

Bucky pauses long enough to take in a deep breath and let it out slowly through his nose. "I don't--"

"What?"

"Deserve you, Steve."

Steve's heart is so, so heavy, but it starts to lift when Bucky tilts to the side and slides slowly into bed.

Steve crowds him; wraps his arms around him and pulls him close, and Bucky leans hard into him like this is the only thing he wants. "Bucky," he says. "You deserve so much better."

  


  


  


  
**A C C E P T A N C E**  
_(the real kind -- at long, long fucking last)_  
_april 2017_   


  


Whatever Bucky'd intuited about time apart had been right on the money. Steve hates being wrong, but it's hard to feel bitter about _this:_ a resolution, of sorts. 

The feeling that they are where they're supposed to be, at long fucking last, is hard to avoid. When they spend their days apart, it no longer feels desperate. They spend long days together, too, watching movies or figuring out how to cook something modern, or sparring, now a much more interesting endeavor now that Bucky has his left hand. They fuck, they sleep -- sometimes even at normal hours. They spend full days apart, processing, living -- passing each other with gentle hands and wordless smiles, or with kisses, chaste or passionate. Sometimes this leads them tumbling wordlessly into one of the bedrooms, or sometimes they carry on with their days. It feels almost -- normal. Like this is what they should've had all along. 

At least -- until Steve catches him muttering in Russian under his breath; when he catches Bucky flipping a pen around as though it were a blade. When Bucky sits bolt upright and reaches for a weapon that isn't there in the middle of the night; when Steve has to blink himself out of the haze of sleep and hold Bucky's eye until he rolls off of him again, hands retreating from his neck or his wrists, curling into himself with horrid shame.

In the mornings, they start up again like it's all the same. As with remembering, they become masters at forgetting. They spar. They eat. They read. They fuck. They watch musicals: _Singing in the Rain. Annie. The Sound of Music. Fiddler on the Roof,_ again, when Bucky gets annoyed at Steve for singing it in the shower and tries to exorcise it out of him by way of exposure alone.

All along, they chat idly but not with any seeming aim. It's a gentle conversation, something that feels like getting to know the other's personality in the wake of years apart. Steve tries to encourage them toward one of the remaining words, from time to time, but it isn't all that purposeful. It's something that's to happen at its own pace, now. 

He knows Bucky knows he's doing it, but it's still a bit catastrophic when Bucky looks at him after a particularly obvious redirect and just looks _devastated,_ exhausted, like he can't do this anymore.

Steve takes a breath and pokes at the eggs he's trying to get right. "Almost there, Buck."

He lets Bucky walk away, after that. When he comes back in for breakfast they don't speak for hours.

It takes them lengthy, annoying weeks to figure out _longing_. By the time Steve finally narrows it down to the time he'd shaven that stray patch of hair off Bucky's neck in '43, they've had time enough to curl up on the sofa, Bucky rigid with pain and resistance but finding ground in pressing his face against Steve as he fights.

Steve's next words, a long time later, fingers raking gentle through his hair, are to ask if he wants it cut.

"No," Bucky gravels. "I like it long."

"I'm surprised by that. It doesn't get in your way?"

Bucky shifts, swallows. Steve settles his breathing slow and lets him take his time.

"You asked me something a long time ago," Bucky says. "Feels like a long time ago. Guess it wasn't. In Kiev. You asked -- sort of -- how many people I'd killed during the war."

Steve exhales and leans his head against the back of the sofa. "I didn't mean to."

"I think -- you know, though. You were my commanding officer. You asked me every day. You kept track."

Steve doesn't say anything. After all of _this_ , the truth still has the capacity to feel fucking brutal.

"It's a big number, Steve."

"Yeah, Buck. I know."

"I had my free will then."

"Either we all did or none of us."

Bucky makes an annoyed sound. "You love shades of grey, don't you?"

"Leftover from when I was colourblind, I guess."

He looks up at Steve, eyes narrow. "You're a regular laugh riot."

"I try."

Bucky exhales and settles back against him. "I cut it all off once. I was -- in a tough place. Early on. Just hacked it all off with a knife, because I… had to, for whatever reason. It was ugly, but I figured out I couldn't be him. Barnes. Same way I couldn't be the Soldier. I -- _used_ to be Barnes. But I wasn't..."

Steve nods, understanding completely. "Well, I like it, anyhow."

A hint of a smile, through that clench in his jaw. Bucky shuts his eyes. "Noticed that."

"You still like my beard?"

Bucky nods. "I do. I--" He swallows, hard, painfully. "Maybe it's for the best, Steve. That we don't look like them anymore."

It's relief, somehow, to realize this. They bask in it until Bucky falls asleep, exhausted by devastation and comfort in pair.

  


  


  


"The thing I keep going back to is when we ran out of money for heat," Steve says eventually.

It's been weeks again, full with running casual and exhausting drills; talking through the details of the memories they've discussed, Bucky wincing but present, pained but himself, as he has Steve describe minute details: colours, sensations, trying to override the abiding smell of blood or bile or the urge to punch every time Bucky tries to think of them. Steve's been gently trying to push them toward _furnace,_ talking about temperatures; and it hadn't taken Bucky long to figure out why, to ask him for the word first, determined not to let Steve torture himself trying to think of what it could be alone. 

Bucky's propped himself against Steve in the way he prefers, and Steve holds at his legs, both of them trying to think through the other's perspective.

Bucky grunts, unconvinced. "We didn't have a furnace."

"I know."

A thrumming pause. Steve has the peculiar feeling Bucky's withholding something, but he can't blame him when he's doing the same. "You were always cold," Bucky says. "Never let me pay for anything. Wanted to clap you on the head for that."

"But you were fine."

"Two people in that house, Rogers."

"You were already paying the rent."

"You'd bundle up in six blankets and sit near the oven when it was on just to quit shivering enough to do your assignments. It was pathetic."

"You were already indebted to the butcher to the tune of fifteen dollars just to keep iron in my diet. Don't think I didn't know that."

"You know about the baker too?"

Steve hadn't. "Of course."

Bucky smiles. "Liar."

Steve sighs and tries to ignore the spark of embarrassment in his gut as his mind drifts back to the thing he's not saying. "I need you to at least _try_ not to make fun of me for this."

Bucky's eyes narrow. "Okay."

"When -- ah -- in the winter, when I couldn't stay warm to save my life..."

"Yeah."

"Well, you were always warm, so I used to call you my…" He covers his face with a hand. "I can't say this."

"That's adorable, but no you didn't."

"In my head. Which doesn't make sense, because then it's not your memory, it's--"

But Bucky cuts him off with a pained noise in the back of his throat. "Fuck," he grits out, hands clenching in Steve's clothes.

Steve buries his fingers in Bucky's hair and strokes, lips leaning at his temple. After months at this, after _months,_ his heart rate still picks up every time. 

"Fucking -- Jesus." The heel of Bucky's hand pounds lightly against Steve's chest. "I hate us both."

"Why?"

"Romantic fucking garbage."

Steve's smile breaks through the tension in his lips. "Why, Bucky. You saying you care about me, after all this time?"

"You don't understand, I'm as bad as you. I -- read a whole book of poetry I saw on your shelf, just to impress you."

He blinks his surprise. " _Did_ you?"

"Turns out you never fucking read it in the first place. It was a gift. You couldn't wrap your head around that shit sometimes, I could never parse what would resonate and what wouldn't."

Steve rifles through the possible book options in his mind. "What, _Songs of a Sourdough_?"

Bucky nods, forehead still pressed at his shoulder. "You are goddamn Sam McGee."

It's true that Steve never read that book at the time, but he has read it since -- one of the books he left on the shelf of his DC apartment, probably long since rifled through and tossed aside by the authorities. "Oh, come on. I was never at risk of _dying from cold_."

"And yet I thought of it every time I saw you sitting by some goddamn heat source trying to leech off it like an amphibian. Thought if I stuffed you in there I'd open the doors and see you happy as a clam, burning alive."

"I was miserable in the heat!"

"That was humidity," Bucky says. "Fire's a dry heat."

"So glad you've thought this through."

"Fucking -- 'there sat Sam, cool and calm, in the heart of the _furnace roar_ '--"

Steve blinks. "Oh."

Bucky shakes his head and leans back, running a hand over his face. "That's not even the worst part."

"It's _not_?"

"Given that alternative, Rogers, I… decided I preferred to serve as your furnace."

The laugh that bursts out of him is profound and hacking. "Bucky. You're _worse_ than me!"

"Take that back."

"Oh, man. This must be so awful for you."

"Easily the worst thing about my life right now."

Steve looks at Bucky's face and sees something peculiar, still pained but _relieved_ , like he knows something Steve doesn't; and it's then that it hits him.

That was the last word.

"Печь," Bucky says, sudden, and shudders through the reaction that follows.

Steve blinks. "Oh my god."

Bucky looks at him, as though trying to confirm. "Печь."

"Печь. That's it."

"Печь."

"Jesus. Bucky, that's... all of them."

They stare at each other, hearts beating. 

"Go through them all," Bucky gravels. He's pale, he swallows hard -- but he's sure.

Steve nods, feeling ill from shock. "Семнадцать," he says. "Ржавый." Bucky makes a noise in his throat and leans hard against Steve, but Steve barrels on. "Один. Девять." Fingers in his shirt. "Товарный вагон. Возвращение домой. Доброкачественная." Bucky's shaking, he can't keep control, and Steve's shaking too but he says, "Тоска," he says, "Рассвет." Then that's nine, and they can endure it all, or this is the limit; and he says it, "Печь," only just before his voice gives in.

There is nothing but the sound of Bucky's breath, haggard in his chest. Steve is drowning in tension.

"Bucky," Steve mutters eventually, eyes shut, jaw set, holding and holding on.

"Again," Bucky says, ravaged, "in order. In the order in the book."

Steve doesn't want to; oh, god, he doesn't want to. But he takes in a breath and starts in anyway.

And there's something to it, to the order, because it's harder this time. Sound turns over in Bucky's chest and Steve can't take it, he takes Bucky into his arms as full as he can and barrels on; the words drag in his throat, he hates this, he hates this, tears spill hot out of his eyes and he's left fighting for breath, but he gets through it, he keeps talking, until -- _Freight car,_ at the end of it, fitting, devastating.

And then there is nothing to do but wait.

Gathered in Steve's arms, Bucky is shaking apart. "Bucky," Steve says. It's a whisper, his face is way too hot; he has never been so afraid, but --

Bucky says, subdued -- "Yeah."

Shaking relief fills his lungs, but it's not enough to calm him; he can't quite believe it. "Bucky?"

His fingers clench against Steve's leg; his lips set at his knee; and then he forces himself to sitting, eyes shot with red, lips white, and pulls at Steve's neck until their foreheads connect. 

"I'm okay," he mutters, and Steve thinks he's never held onto anything the way he's holding onto this. "I'm okay."

It's a laugh or a sob, the noise that follows, or maybe it's both. "Okay," he replies, and then makes the sound again, helpless. "Fuck, Bucky. _Bucky,_ I…"

"Would you please," Bucky says, swallowing hard, "stop talking, Rogers, for--" 

But the sentence dies when Steve kisses him, magnetic, slow and shaking, determined to make him feel something _good_.

Bucky kisses him back through shallow breaths, pulling at Steve just as hard.

They have nowhere to be. They have nothing to do -- no mandate, no orders; nothing left to them but _this_ , for as long as they want it. 

Neither one of them moves for a long, long time.

  


  


  


  
**H O P E**  
_may 2017_   


  


"Buck."

Bucky opens his eyes. Anxiety rides thick in him, forcing his throat tight when he swallows.

"Yeah," he manages, and doesn't look over.

Steve's fingers are entwined with Bucky's and it's a vice grip, even with his prosthetic arm clenched into a fist against his thigh. Steve had caught his attention with the aim of telling Bucky that he was safe, that he had him, that he would never let go again; but the fact of being stuck in the quinjet with everyone else leaves him unsure of what to say. Sam and Natasha are pretending not to pay attention to them, rifling through reports as they never seem to stop doing these days; but Steve still looks to them, nervously, realizing intimacy still comes slow in the company of others.

"You know the doors are closed, right?" he says at last, and hopes his meaning is clear.

Bucky takes it for what it is: cracks a smile, lets his eyes fall closed again, lungs filling with steady breath. "Yeah," he mutters, and it almost sounds casual. "Thank you, Rogers. I can plainly fucking see the doors are closed, but it's good you pointed that out. Who knows where I'd be without you to state the obvious."

"Just checking."

"I'm a hundred, I'm not blind."

"So what's the problem?"

"Space too small for your stupid shoulders." He cracks an eye open again. "I also happen to hate all of you, so there's no escape in several respects."

Sam's gaze flickers up from one of the four pages he has fanned in front of him. "Hate to be an inconvenience to you," he says dryly. "Can't imagine how your life has been derailed."

"Why are you even here, Wilson?" Bucky asks, forcing himself to meet his eye. "Too lazy to fly across the measly Atlantic?"

"Yeah. Laziness. _That's_ my primary problem in this situation."

"If you need a push out the door, I'm happy to oblige."

"You'd like that."

"I didn't offer out of the goodness of my heart."

"Children," says Natasha. "It's a long journey. If we could have some peace and quiet?"

"You want to tell us what you're doing over there?" Bucky asks, apparently figuring out that keeping himself talking is actually helpful.

"Nope," Natasha says shortly, not bothering to look at him.

Bucky seems to realize that he doesn't really want to know, anyway, so he settles back into his seat and closes his eyes again. "Fine," he gravels. "I don't know how you can read on these things."

"Practice."

"That mean this gets easier?"

Natasha's mouth quirks with sympathy as she looks at him. "Couldn't say. Always liked flying."

"Bully for you."

Sam looks up, likewise full of compassion now that Bucky can't see him with it. "So you guys figured out what you're gonna do on the other side or what?"

"Nope," say Bucky and Steve in unison.

"Just gonna wing it and hope for the best?"

"Yep," they say.

"And you don't see any kind of problem with that plan?"

"Who would suspect that we'd return to the eastern seaboard after all that?" Steve says dryly.

Sam blinks at him. "It's a risk, that's all I'm saying."

He's not wrong. It's a risk of massive proportions. But after weeks and months of discussing the options, they'd realized it was all they'd wanted to do. They'd toyed with touring Europe together, but realized they'd done it independently far too recently, and with far too much baggage. They thought about staying in Wakanda, or finding somewhere totally other to try to set up a new life, but they kept coming back to the same thing: that after all this time spent fighting, after all they've been through, it felt uneasy to do anything other than go _home_.

_"Hey, Buck," Steve had said, one morning when Bucky had come in from night watch as usual. "You ready to go home?"_

_Bucky'd been chewing tobacco so the words had come out thin and gritted. "Sure, Rogers. You distract the others by knocking them unconscious, I'll make a run for it, we'll meet up in Brest in three days."_

_"I mean it, you know."_

_"So do I. You go by Ginger Rogers, I'll be Clark Gable, and we'll see how far we get before we get thrown in the slammer."_

_Heat crept inexplicably up his neck. "I think we might be close to finishing here," he said, looking at his hands, suddenly embarrassed of his idealism._

_"How d'you figure that, exactly?"_

_"Well, Brest case in point. We have an exit now." He hazards a delicate smile, but Bucky doesn't accept it well. "One more Hydra cell to find. We get to the border in a week, clear out the cell a couple weeks after that. The Nazis are nothing without Hydra."_

_"Gonna have to disagree with you on that one, Steve, but I applaud your commitment to unscrupulous naivete in this time of crisis."_

_"Come on." Steve forced his voice calm again with a clear of his throat. "Not even a_ shred _of hope?"_

_And Bucky had begun dismantling his rifle, fingers working automatically through the motions, in time with the steady pound of his heart -- that rhythm that never left him, that Steve couldn't help but notice. "Tell you what, Rogers," he'd muttered, not looking at him. "We survive this war, I'll take you out for a nice dinner. New York steak, big as you if you want it." His gaze flickered up and met Steve's eye through those eyelashes, long and sincere, and Steve had wondered if he'd still been surprised to see him big. "How's that for something to look forward to?"_

_Steve had been helpless but to smile a bit, even if he knew that the promise was empty as all hell when Bucky was as sure as he was that he'd never survive to the end of the war. "It's something," Steve said only, then let it drop and asked for his report._

Steve looks up. "We know it's a risk, Sam. But the war ended seventy-two years later for us than it did for most." He smiles, something oddly serene. "I don't mind admitting that I'm just relieved to be finally going home."

Sam glances at Bucky then, sighingly, nods. "I guess I can understand that."

Steve pauses to let himself feel this, this calm, this hope, this _confidence_ \-- that for the first time in years, they finally have a chance of building something good instead of tearing something down.

"Besides," he says, when the feeling's passed. "Bucky owes me a New York steak."

Bucky groans low in his throat. The grip tightens on his hand. "I can't believe you remembered that," he gravels.

"A promise is a promise, Buck."

"Look. I take full responsibility for what I did as the Winter Soldier, but anything I said in 1944 is kind of a wash, don't you think?"

"Didn't you also say that about 1934 to 1937?"

"Yeah, but I was crazy for you and losing my mind."

"And 1937 to 1940?"

"Only when it came to the war. I meant everything I said about you."

"Even about my looks?"

" _Especially_ about your looks, Rogers."

Steve turns to him, deadpan. "How do you like my figure now, Buck?"

"It's very stupid, Steve. We've been over this."

If Steve looks up to see Sam pinching at the bridge of his nose and Natasha narrowly subduing a smile, the quinjet's pilot, at least, has found it within her not to so much as turn her head.

Bucky grunts at them, then hits his head against the wall behind him, as though remembering they're still in the air. "To be continued," he mutters, swallowing hard against mounting bile; and Steve holds steady against the swoop of relentless hope in his gut.

He holds steadily on to Bucky, to _Bucky_ , sitting right there beside him, and shuts his eyes in kind.

"Yeah, Buck," he says, and squeezes his hand. "Maybe when we get home."

  


  


**Author's Note:**

> I wanted two major things out of fandom as I processed Civil War. One was for Bucky -- not Steve -- to be in control of his own recovery. Bucky going into cryo resonated with me more than others, but _only_ if he chose it freely and maybe even fought for it against the resistance Steve would have offered. This is not, obviously, the first time someone's written the post-CW recovery arc, but I personally have not read any (eta: I've read one now! they still seem rare) that didn't somehow frame Bucky's recovery as partially belonging to Steve. I wrote this fic in Steve's POV, but I rewrote and rewrote until it was as clear as I knew how to make it that Steve is in no sense Bucky's handler. 
> 
> Steve can steamroll, but he also values individual choice to such a massive extent that [gestures to events of Civil War]. He would never have wanted to become Bucky's next captor. The first two chapters of this fic are really meant to establish that he understands perfectly what it means to feel trapped and unlike yourself, to try to recover yourself amidst pressures from all sides to be something else. So if he seems a little docile in the face of raw emotion, imagine him practicing conversations with Bucky over and over, trying to force his convictions louder than his anxiety, for, you know, weeks at a time to get there.
> 
> The other thing I wanted was for Bucky's recovery to take time. To be dynamic, for there to be successes and failures and conflict, and for him to value the more pedestrian aspects of remembering how to live -- especially, in this case, trying to maintain a close, trustful relationship -- as much or more than just trying to get the trigger out. I wanted it to take time and be both hard and possible. I didn't want him to be absent from it in any sense, and I didn't want to erase the intense achievement that the first two years of his recovery in solitude was. He did it, and it took time, and eventually he asks Steve for help and it's hard but he does that too. The credit lies with him. That is the story I wanted to tell.
> 
> More historical notes:
> 
> Gay culture -- particularly in New York -- was tolerated to a certain degree, particularly through the 1920s. Communities existed and were quite open, and the straights kind of shrugged and often left them to it. The Depression, however, inspired a massive cultural change of heart; lacking luxury, people took fear and loathing out on the gay community through the '30s, particularly beginning in 1931. 
> 
> Steve lived canonically (616) very close to the gay centre of Brooklyn through the '20s and would've had a lot of exposure to gay culture accordingly, as, one assumes, would have Bucky, who at least would have spent time at Steve's house. They probably grew up with a certain understanding that being intimate with another man was okay, at least in the right contexts. It would have been painful to watch things evolve as they entered adulthood. 
> 
> In this story, Bucky figures out he's in love with Steve in 1934 -- well into the period where raids and violence were forcing gay folks back indoors. He would've been thick with anxiety about other people probably a lot more than himself. (Steve, however, never met a bigot he wouldn't like to fight, so he just kind of blindly threw his fists through the whole thing and hoped for the best.) As authority bodies like the police and the State Liquor Authority were largely involved in the raids on gay-friendly establishments, Steve would have developed a strong anti-authoritarian bent, one assumes, from this source as well.
> 
> Finally, Natasha went away with Sam and neither was much mentioned after that. I wasn't trying to get rid of them; I was trying to give them more space for their own spin-off. I have plans for them. Hopefully they'll show up again soon.
> 
> Thank you for reading. I am on [tumblr](http://newsbypostcard.tumblr.com).


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